my letter to Time's Editor re: Clipper

[Carl_Ellison@vos.stratus.com]

To: Time Magazine Letters
FAX: (212) 522-0601

From: Carl M. Ellison
      Stratus Computer, Inc.
      55 Fairbanks Blvd
      Marlborough MA 01752
FAX: (508) 624-7488

Re: March 14, 1994; Vol. 143, No. 11; p. 90
    "Beware, Uncle Sam Wants to Listen In"

Dear Editor:

I enjoyed your article and was pleased to see that a poll of American
citizens showed 80% opposed to Clipper.  That matches my own informal
count.

However, the introductory paragraph of your article comes close to
repeating a very common misconception by claiming that cryptography was
secret and was dominated by the National Security Agency.  These statements
give the impression that cryptography was somehow the property of the
government until recently, and that civilian cryptography is a recent
development.  The only thing which is new in this field is the personal
computer -- making cryptography easy to apply without errors.  Cryptography
itself is as old as writing.  David Kahn's history of cryptography, "The
Codebreakers" (Macmillan, 1967), shows that cryptography strong enough to
frustrate governments of the day has been invented and used by private
citizens for the entire 4000 year history of cryptography.

Cryptography has not been secret, either.  As of 1931 when Herbert Yardley
published "The American Black Chamber" (Bobbs-Merrill), there was no legal
secrecy applied to even government uses of cryptography.  There never has
been secrecy applied to civilian cryptography.  [A desire to do so was
announced back in the late 1970's by the NSA's Bobby Inman about the time
public-key cryptography was first published but that desire was soundly
denied by Congress in the Computer Security Act of 1987.]

The National Security Agency was created in the early 1950s, but strong
cryptography in private hands in this country dates back to the country's
beginnings.  For example, the only provably unbreakable cipher (Vernam's
one-time-tape) was put into public hands in about 1920, while a system
cooked up between Thomas Jefferson and a civilian friend of his was strong
enough that it was reinvented and used by the Navy in WW-II.  "The
Codebreakers" gives many more examples, through history, of civilian
cryptography as strong as or stronger than that used by the military of the
time and I recommend that your readers check it out in the local library.

Sincerely,




Carl Ellison