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MacNeil/Lehrer Clipper Transcript
MacNeil-Lehrer - Clipper Segment - Thurs 07APR94
OPEN SESAME
MacN:
Next tonight, law enforcement vs privacy on the information
highway.
A tiny piece of silicon, the clipper chip, has raised questions
about how to balance individual privacy rights with the needs of
law enforcement agencies in the computer age. Time Magazine
technology editor, Philip Elmer-Dewitt, reports.
PE-D:
Today's high tech information highway has a major drawback. For
some people it's not private enough. Many of the routine
transactions conducted by computer and over phone lines leave
a trail of digital fingerprints, messages recording the time and
date and nature of the transaction. These are stored on computer
disks and can be easily traced. Some consumers simply need
absolute security, the assurance that confidential phone calls,
faxes, or financial transactions cannot be intercepted.
[Two AT&T employees using an AT&T Secure Phone]
[Woman] "Good morning, AT&T."
[Man] "Good morning, Miss Bishop, this is Mr. McGovern."
PE-D:
"To keep transactions private, computer experts advise people
to talk in code, as these representatives from AT&T demonstrate."
[Man] "I'd like to go secure, if we could, please. I'll come
to you."
PE-D:
"They're scrambling their telephone call, just like spies do."
[LCD screen on man's set displays, 'secure dE05']
[Man] "Would you please give me the first two numbers, and I
will give you the second two."
[Woman] "OK, the first two numbers are 'dE'."
[Man] "Fine, we're secure now. And now I'd like to discuss some
company information with you."
[Nerd at keyboard, clicking check box labeled 'DES Encrypt' on
screen labeled 'DSS Options Menu']:
"OK. I can choose this option to do both signature and
encryption."
PE-D:
"Cryptography is the science of making and breaking codes, of
turning plain text into coded text, or cipher.
Nerd:
"OK. This is our old 1040 form."
PE-D:
"Like taking this 1040 tax form and changing it into unreadable
ciphertext."
Nerd:
"This is your actual encrypted text of the 1040 form."
[Ciphertext scrolls up screen.]
Marc Rotenberg [of CPSR] 'Computer Privacy Advocate':
"Cryptography is the way you make communication networks secure.
It's the way you protect privacy. It's the way you make it
possible for banks to send financial information, for businesses
to send trade secrets, for individuals to send personal records,
medical records, financial data. All of this happens because
cryptography is the basic technology of privacy."
PE-D:
"All modern encryption systems are variations on the secret codes
school children use to jumble words. The simplest kind of code
is a straight forward letter for letter substitution, for example
where A stands for D, B stands for E, C stands for F, and so
forth down the alphabet." [WFW screen showing the simple ROT3
substitution cipher mentioned.]
"These simple codes have evolved into mathematical formulas of
such extraordinary complexity that they're virtually unbreakable.
[Scene of a hand pushing a card into a Datakey reader.] In the
past few years, a new generation of very powerful encryption
tools have entered the marketplace. They are easy to use and
easy to get by just about anybody. And they are a matter of
concern to law enforcement and national security experts who
rely on information gathered from wire taps to do their jobs.
[Scene of technician wiring a phone board.] Geoffrey
Greiveldinger is Special Counsel for the Justice Department."
GG:
"There has become available, and there has certainly become
available in larger numbers and greater variety, very effective,
very user friendly, very high voice quality encryption. And
suddenly the prospect of encryption being used regularly in the
private sector is one that law enforcement recognizes that it's
going to have to grapple with. That really is what brought us
up short."
PE-D:
"Lynn McNulty is with the National Institute of Standards and
Technology."
LMcN:
"Encryption is a double-edged sword. It can be used to protect
law abiding citizens and it can also be used to shield criminal
activities and also activities that can affect the security of
this country."
[Aerial shot of Ft. Meade on a workday --- acres and acres of
employees' cars.]
PE-D:
"Secret codes and national security are the bailiwick of the NSA,
the top secret branch of government that sucks up international
communications traffic like a giant vacuum cleaner in the sky,
using the most powerful decryption technology available to tease
out its secrets." [Shots of NSA sign and main building
entrance.]
[Interior shot of NSA museum, with Enigma Machine and Cray in
background.] "Cryptographers used to use mechanical devices like
this World War II era Enigma Machine, to make and break secret
codes. Now they use supercomputers, like this Cray XMP. A
cipher from one of these [Enigma] machines could be broken in a
matter of minutes. Supercomputers can design secret codes so
complex that it would take another supercomputer centuries to
crack it. And that's a problem for the National Security Agency
which gathers foreign intelligence for the US and runs this
cryptologic museum in Ft. Meade, Maryland. The NSA has never met
a secret code it couldn't crack. And it wants to keep it that
way."
[Hand holding Clipper Chip.] "So the NSA developed a new code
called 'Skipjack' and put it in this silicon chip, smaller than
a fingernail. This is the Clipper Chip, the focus of a fierce
technological policy debate among privacy advocates, law
enforcement, and the business community. The Clipper Chip
[graphic of chip labeled 'MYK78A'] combines a powerful encryption
scheme with a back door [skeleton keyhole appears on Clipper
graphic], a master key that unlocks the code [Yale key slides
into skeleton keyhole] and lets authorized law enforcement agents
intercept --- and understand --- coded messages. The NSA wants
the National Institute of Standards & Technology and all other
government agencies to use Clipper, and only Clipper, when they
want to be sure that their phone calls, faxes, and electronic
mail can't be intercepted. To encourage its use in business,
the US guarantees that the Clipper code is uncrackable and that
the master keys that can unlock it are safely stored away. In a
plan devised by the NSA and approved by the White House, that
master key will be split into two pieces, one held in safe
keeping at the Commerce Department, the other at Treasury [the
Yale key splits in two on either side of the Clipper Chip]. Law
enforcement agencies will need a court order before they can get
access to the keys. Unauthorized use of Clipper keys will be a
felony, punishable by up to 5 years in jail.
LMcN:
"There will be no vulnerability there that can be exploited by,
say, a rogue law enforcement agency or by a hostile outsider, to
compromise the keys that will be ... that will allow authorized
people to unlock the key escrow encryption cryptography."
PE-D:
"But privacy advocates aren't so sure. Like Marc Rotenberg of
Computer Scientists [sic] for Social Responsibility, they see
Clipper as an attempt by the NSA to block people from using
cryptography to keep their affairs to themselves. They're asking
people to register their objections by computer." [Screen
displaying graph with sharply increasing number of responses
(c.38k).]
MR:
"Here we have on the screen a letter to the President. And we
ask them to simply send a message with the words 'I oppose
Clipper.'"
"Basically, it's a proposal for surveillance. It's a way to make
it easier to wiretap the network. And the reason it's such a bad
idea is what we need right now is privacy protection. We need
more secure networks, not more vulnerable networks."
PE-D:
"On these networks, people are logging on to argue the pros and
cons of the Clipper proposal. David Banisar, one of Rotenberg's
colleagues, has been tracking that debate.
DB, 'Computer Privacy Advocate':
"On the Internet, which is the international network of computers,
there's been an incredible amount of discussion. There's been
thousands of messages posted, hundreds per day. And it goes on
almost forever. [Screen showing message list of
alt.privacy.clipper.] The public is going to reject this
because, basically, we want a national information infrastructure
where people can communicate. We don't want a national
surveillance infrastructure, where the main purpose is for the
government to be able to control and watch over what we're doing
all the time."
PE-D:
"It may sound like spies vs nerds. But at the heart of the
Clipper debate is a fundamental question of Constitutional rights.
One side thinks that people have a basic right to use the most
powerful encryption tools they can get their hands on to keep
their affairs private. The other thinks that that right must
be superseded by the legitimate needs of law enforcement. There
are cryptographers on both sides of the debate."
Dorothy Denning, Georgetown University:
"I think it would be folly to let the capability to do electronic
surveillance be completely overridden by technology, so that we
couldn't do that. I think it's a much safer bet to put it into
the system so that we can do it, to make sure that we have good
procedural checks and laws and so on to govern the use of that so
it's checked. And if it's misused, to make sure that it's
properly dealt with."
Whitfield Diffie, Sun Microsystems:
"If you say to people that they, as a matter of fact, can't
protect their conversations, and in particular their political
conversations, I think you take a long step toward making a
transition from a free society to a totalitarian society."
PE-D:
"Meanwhile, the Clipper Chip is moving full speed ahead."
[Shot of three prototype Clipper chips:
(1) (white patch on black)
MYK78A
MYKOTRONX,
INC.
#100004A
(2) (gold)
VLSI
9745TS 383511
VM06222-6
MYKO-MYK78PROTO
PROTO A USA
(3) (black)
VLSI
9312AS401944
VM05413-1
MYKOTRONX
MYK78A PROTO ]
PE-D:
"A company called Mykotronx is making the chips and AT&T is
selling a variety of telephones with the chips built in, including
this device which it is producing for the government to protect
the privacy of phone calls within the Justice Department [shot of
AT&T Surity Telephone Device 3600 (crypto brick)]. But it's not
at all clear that the devices will find a market outside the
government. Some of Clipper's most vocal opponents are the very
computer and telecommunications firms the government hopes will
adopt it. [The following Logos appear: Apple, IBM, Microsoft,
Prodigy, Sun, HP, Digital, Lotus, Oracle]. Their gripe centers
on the US export laws that make it illegal to sell encryption
systems abroad. To encourage US companies to use the government's
system, the administration has lifted those export controls for
Clipper, but only for Clipper."
Jerry Berman, Electronic Frontier Foundation:
"You're going to thwart our foreign markets, because no foreign
country and no foreign person is going to use a device that's
made by NSA and where the keys are held by a US government
agency."
PE-D:
"As the lines are strung to carry the traffic of the emerging
information highway, the greatest fear of privacy advocates is
that Clipper may be only the first step down a path that leads to
more and more government snooping. They point to a new bill the
Administration is circulating on Capitol Hill --- the so-called
'Digital Telephony Bill' --- that would require phone and cable
companies to provide the government with systemwide access to
even more information."
MR:
"It is absolutely clear, if you look over the last three to four
years of the FBI's proposals and the proposals from the National
Security Agency, that there is a plan --- in steps --- to
restrict the use of cryptography in the United States. There's
a plan to ensure that communication networks are designed to
facilitate wire surveillance. And there's every reason to
believe after Clipper goes forward, after the Digital Telephony
proposal goes forward, that the next step will be to restrict
non-compliant cryptography."
PE-D:
"In real life --- or 'RL', as computer buffs call it --- it's
often not clear where to draw the line between the rights of the
individual and the needs of society. [Telephoto sidewalk shot
showing masses of humanity.] It's no different in cyberspace ---
that world of interconnected computers, where messages fly back
and forth on video screens [Screens showing US West Community
Link Service, Minitel, Medline, American Interactive
Technologies, PC Flowers, and Arcade]. Experts say that the new
information super highway will have to have some rules of the
road. The hard part is deciding where and how to draw them."
Dat, dah, de-la, dat, dah!
-----
Transcribed by Lois & Duncan Frissell