NYT Article on Clipper Chip Retreat

[mclow@san_marcos.csusm.edu (Marshall Clow)]

Taken from the New York Times on America Online:
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7/21:ADMINISTRATION REVERSES ITSELF ON WIRETAPPING TECHNOLOGY

By JOHN MARKOFF

c.1994 N.Y. Times News Service

In an abrupt and significant reversal, the Clinton administration indicated
Wednesday that it was willing to consider alternatives to its Clipper chip
wiretapping technology, which has been widely criticized by industry
executives and privacy-rights groups.

In a letter Wednesday to a congressional opponent of the technology, Vice
President Al Gore said that the administration was willing to explore
industry alternatives to Clipper, a system designed in secrecy by National
Security Agency scientists.

Intended as a way to let people scramble their electronic conversations -
but retain law-enforcement agencies' ability to conduct court-authorized
wiretaps - the Clipper chip was introduced by the administration in April
1993 as the government's preferred method for communicating in secret code
in the era of computerized digital electronics. Such coded communications
use hardware and software known as encryption technology.

Critics have said that because Clipper is classified, there is no way to
verify whether the nation's intelligence agencies have embedded a secret
electronic "backdoor" in the Clipper design that might allow for
unauthorized government spying.

And software and computer industry executives have worried that the
government would use its Clipper preference as a way to block exports of
hardware and software products using other commercially available - and
more popular - encryption methods.

But Gore's letter is the apparent result of a compromise with Rep. Maria
Cantwell, D-Wash., who recently introduced legislation that would have
significantly relaxed controls on the export of encryption software.

Ms. Cantwell said she welcomed the vice president's willingness to
compromise. "I view this as going down a new path, with a new set of
criteria," she said Wednesday. "This has been driven by private industry
and privacy groups."

A number of people in the computer industry and in privacy-rights groups
who had read Gore's letter to Ms. Cantwell said that it indicated that the
Clipper chip plan might now be abandoned - at least for anything beyond
basic telephone calls.

As for computer communications and video networks, Gore's letter said, "we
are working with industry to investigate other technologies for those
applications."

Some industry executives hailed the news.

"I think this is great," said Nathan Myhrvold, vice president for advanced
technology at Microsoft Corp., the nation's largest software publisher.
"Maria Cantwell has gone head-to-head with the powers-that-be and they
blinked. The Clipper chip is dead at least for any kind of data stuff."

Microsoft has been one of a wide range of U.S. high technology companies
that have been fighting the administration over the Clipper chip and export
control policies. Software publishers have argued that stiff controls on
the export of coding software hamper them in international competition.

Still, while the administration is now willing to compromise on its
original proposal that became a de facto national standard, it is not ready
to compromise on a principal Clipper feature, known as key escrow.

The original Clipper system called for a two-part key for decoding
scrambled conversations. These two parts of the key - actually two large
numbers - are to be held by two independent government agencies.

Under the plan, when a law enforcement agency had a legally obtained
warrant to listen to a conversation that had been coded by Clipper, it
would obtain the keys from the separate agencies. By merging the keys, it
could obtain a key that would successfully unlock the coded conversation.

Gore's letter said that any industry-proposed alternative to Clipper
accepted by the administration would need to have a key-escrow component.
But the escrow agents need not be government agencies - a proviso of the
Clipper system that had raised concerns over excessive government intrusion
and made it seem unlikely that foreign customers would want to buy
Clipper-based communications products.

Other concessions by the administration include a willingness to consider
an encryption system based on nonclassified mathematical formulas that
would be subject to testing and evaluation by industry experts. The
administration is also willing to let products containing this encryption
system be eligible for export.

The government's National Institute for Standards and Technology recently
licensed such a system from a computer scientist at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology. It could become the basis for a Clipper
replacement.

Not all Clipper critics were ready to endorse the new plan. Marc Rotenberg,
director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington, said
the vice president's letter was a step in the right direction but still did
not resolve a critical concern.

"We cannot accept the key-escrow requirement," Rotenberg said. "This will
undermine the security of the encrypted messages. The privacy risks are
enormous."

But administration officials portrayed the reversal as a fresh start that
indicated their willingness to work with industry and privacy groups to
build a consensus.

"This is a clarification of our goals and our willingness to work with
industry," said Greg Simon, chief domestic policy adviser to the vice
president. "There has been a lot of static on the line between industry and
the administration."





Transmitted:  94-07-20 23:07:46 EDT

Marshall Clow
Aladdin Systems
mclow@san_marcos.csusm.edu