2 bad ideas

[catalyst-remailer@netcom.com]

Business Week, March 21, 1994, p.126
Editorials

DON'T LET WASHINGTON PLAY 'I SPY' ON YOU

Will the Information Superhighway enable the federal government to
become a high-tech snoop on a scale undreamt of in George Orwell's
worst nightmares?  For those who believe in the Fourth Amendment's
promise that citizens shall be "secure in their persons, houses,
papers, and effects," the latest rumblings are ominous.

The Clinton Administration is pushing two bad ideas left over from
President Bush: the Digital Telephony Initiative and the Escrowed
Encryption Standard (EES), known by the code name "Clipper" (page
37).

Take the telephone initiative.  Under current law, the government can
obtain phone records without a warrant and can even trace all local
calls.  The proposed legislation allows law enforcement and
intelligence agencies to trace calls as they are made.

Clipper is worse.  The government is offering business a new system
for encrypting computer data files, data transmissions, and voice
telephone calls to protect it from hackers and industrial spies.  But
built into the encryption computer chip is a trapdoor called the Law
Enforcement Access Field, which gives the Federal Bureau of
Investigation and the National Security Agency a way to decode
messages.

Corporate reaction to Clipper is overwhelmingly hostile.  First,
Clipper requires a special chip, meaning that encryption cannot simply
be written into new or existing programs.  Second, the trapdoor would
give the government enormous snooping power over corporate life.

Wise citizens--corporate and individual--should heed Thomas
Jefferson's advice to remain eternally vigilant against an
overreaching government.