Re: NRC Cryptography Report: The Text of the Recommendations

[Hal <hfinney@shell.portal.com>]

I read the overview of this, and while it is good that the report calls
for maintaining the legality of domestic encryption and some slight
loosening of the export rules, overall I was diappointed.

First, the report reads as though the intended audience is law
enforcement and security personnel.  The perspective seems to generally
be from the points of view of those bodies.  This is just a subjective
impression I have and it would be interesting to hear whether other
people feel the same.

Second, although they go to some lengths to emphasize the importance of
an open, unclassified process, and that the report itself is completely
unclassified, there are some curios omissions.  For example,
recommendation 4.1 is that 56-bit DES encryption should be exportable.
However, they follow that by saying, "Products covered under
Recommendation 4.1 must be designed in a way that would preclude their
repeated use to increase confidentiality beyond the acceptable level."

This is then followed with a couple of pages of justification for why
this relaxation of the export policies should be allowed.  Much is made
of the fact that people will be more likely to use 56 bit encryption than
the 40 bit which is currently allowed.  (This is an example of the
perspective issue I mentioned above.)  However, nowhere is it stated why
more than 56 bits is not OK, and why it is necessary to forbid repeated
use to increase confidentiality.  There is not one word of discussion of
this proviso.

I suspect the reason is that the NSA can break 56 bit DES but cannot
break higher levels.  But the report doesn't say so.  Presumably this is
because that fact is classfied.  Okay, but it seems hypocritical to make
much of the fact that the discussion is open, and then to limit the
recommendations by considerations which can't be discussed openly.

I also think it is sneaky that they bury this limitation in text which
will not be seen by people who read only the recommendations.

Third, although in broad terms the report is supportive of the use of
cryptography, the specific recommendations do very little to liberalize
current policies.  Free domestic access to cryptography is already the
law.  Raising the export size limit from 40 to 56 bits is a step
forward, but a small one.  Beyond 56 bits they recommend the
requirement of escrowed encryption.  Given current moves to standardize
on triple DES, this is a retrenching action.  They recommend
criminalizing the use of cryptography in committing crimes, admitting
that this may be used in some cases (as comparable mail fraud statues
have been) to bring prosecutions against people who cannot be proven to
have committed any other crime.  "[T]he committee understands that it
is largely the integrity of the judicial and criminal justice process
that will be the ultimate check on preventing its use for such
purposes."

Fourth, recommendation 5.2, to promote the use of link encryption for
cellular phones, is designed to reduce privacy, not help it.
"Recommendation 5.2 is an instance of a general philosophy that link (or
node) security provided by a service provider offers more opportunities
for providing law enforcement with legally authorized access than does
security provided by the end user."  When I wrote my letter to the NRC
during their comment period (available at <URL:
http://www.portal.com/~hfinney/nasinput.html >) I made a similar point,
but with the opposite conclusion, that end to end encryption would be
preferred.

Overall, I am disappointed that the report seems to adopt so much of the
point of view of those forces which will oppose the use of cryptography.
At best it seems to be a recognition that change is inevitable, and that
the most that can be hoped for is to ease the transition to a world where
people have free access to privacy tools.  But in the meantime it appears
designed to delay the transition rather than advance it.

Hal