[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]
Letter to the Government
FYI folks, I just sent this electronically and would like to urge
you to express your feelings to the government officials as well.
Don't copy my letter, express your own thoughts, but please do let
them know how you feel about it even if you disagree with me :)
Jim
Sent electronically to:
Representative Maria Cantwell, D-Washington - [email protected]
Representative Lee Hamilton, D-Indiana - [email protected]
Chair of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs
The President of the United States - [email protected]
The Vice President of the United States - [email protected]
The Cypherpunk mailing list of Internet - [email protected]
Greetings,
I wish to express my concerns about a current issue that has
drawn a lot of attention from the computing world. The issue is
that of encryption and the Clipper chip.
We Americans pride ourselves with the freedoms guaranteed us
by the Constitution and it is freedom upon which this entire country
is based. The Clipper chip threatens this freedom in an unprecedented
way.
I, as a professional computer programmer, am frightened by the
desire of some of our Congress members to eliminate all forms of
encryption except special government approved devices such as Clipper.
Although I do not disapprove of the chip, nor of the ability to
break it with the proper search warants, I do disapprove of what the
success of this chip will bring. If Clipper succeeds then it will
promote the wholesale outlawing of any encryption method. This will
be undesirable for four reasons:
1. Right to privacy will be compromised if the citizens
of the United States can not take steps to keep information
such as financial transactions and personal data from prying
eyes.
2. By requiring ONE and only one means of encryption you
would be making it easier for those who wish to do
harm to decypher our information. A cryptoanalyist
would have a much easier time if he is guaranteed to
know the form of encryption used.
3. The Clipper chip will do nothing to deter crime. A
criminal smart enough to use encryption will be smart
enough to use a safe code and not stupid enough to use
the Clipper chip that he knows the governent can decode.
The gangsters of the early to mid 20th century used
nothing that could be called encryption and yet talked
freely about taking packages for delivery and erasing
people. The same would be true today. In fact, there
are programs that exist TODAY and are readily available
that will hide an encrypted message in an otherwise
innocent picture. This method of hiding information is
nearly undetectable. Considering this, criminals would
still use cyphers if they so desired and only law-abiding
citizens would be forced to make their private information
vulnerable.
4. The only thing worse than having no means of privacy is
to give the people a device they trust implicitly which
is, in reality, not secure. Imagine a classified document
from the millitary that is encrypted by the Clipper chip
falling into the hands of an enemy who can decrypt it.
In answer to those who say breaking the Clipper code is
not practical I'd ask "Why was Clipper designed for non-
classified information?" The answer is, of course, that
Clipper is not secure enough to trust to protect our most
sacred documents.
I want to thank those of you who are working to block the "slaughter"
of freedom and the elimination of American's rights to use encryption as
they see fit and to implore anyone whose eyes fall upon this document to
support it as well. Thank you for your time and consideration.
Respectfully
Jim Sewell
1209 Virginia Street
Key West, Florida 33040
--
Tantalus Inc. Bringing people together Jim Sewell-KD4CKQ
2407 N. Roosevelt Blvd. to have a little fun. Internet: [email protected]
Key West, FL 33041 CIS: 71061,1027
(305) 293-8100 "We keep coding and coding and coding..."