NTT Chips Beat Cops

[jya@pipeline.com (John Young)]

   The Economist, June 8, 1996, p. 65. 
 
 
   Encryption 
 
   Silence of the bugs 
 
 
   Spare a thought for America's professional snoops. For 
   decades the FBI and others have counted the telephone 
   wiretap among their favourite weapons against crime, as 
   countless mafiosi can (and did) testify. Now, software in 
   a computer or digital telephone can scramble a message so 
   effectively that no law-enforcement agency can read it. For 
   years, the government has fought back by restricting the 
   use of encryption, to the fury of privacy advocates on the 
   Internet, where rampant eavesdropping makes encryption 
   essential. Now a bit of silicon and a stack of paper have 
   apparently ended the battle: the cops lost. 
 
   The bit of silicon is actually two chips that can encrypt 
   data transmissions so that they are in effect uncrackable. 
   Had the chips been developed in the United States, the 
   government would have classified them as "munitions" and 
   banned their export. But they were developed in Japan, by 
   NTT, the telephone giant, and the Japanese subsidiary of 
   RSA, an American encryption company, which revealed their 
   existence early this week. They can therefore be used 
   around the world, and even imported into the United States. 
   There seems nothing the American government can do about 
   it. 
 
   As if that were not bad enough, America's restrictive 
   encryption policy took another hit last week when a report, 
   commissioned by Congress and compiled by the prestigious 
   National Research Council (NRC), concluded that the policy 
   had hurt Americans far more than it had helped them. For 
   the past few years, the White House has been offering a 
   purported compromise: give the government (or a mutually 
   trusted third party) a key to read your encrypted e-mail, 
   and you can scramble it all you like. The problem with this 
   so-called "key escrow" proposal was that it smacked to many 
   of Big Brotherism. The computer industry rejected it out of 
   hand, and fell back instead on weaker encryption that was 
   not regulated, even though this can be cracked over a 
   weekend with a home PC. 
 
   Up to now, the government's response to cries for better 
   encryption for all has been to fall back on its 
   responsibility to protect the citizenry. The NRC panel 
   rejected this, together with the "if only you knew what we 
   know" argument the government has usually trotted out. 
   Composed of former security officials and encryption 
   experts, this panel did know what the government knows, and 
   was still not convinced. 
 
   Now the NTT chips seem to sweep away the whole debate. NTT 
   has already sold the chips in 15 countries, and they should 
   soon be incorporated in products. Stewart Baker, the former 
   general counsel of America's National Security Agency, 
   concedes that the chips have probably killed encryption 
   controls in America, but argues that the battle will 
   continue to run in Europe, where countries such as France 
   limit their use. For the rest of the world, these bits of 
   silicon may indeed make it harder for police to protect 
   citizens. But they will also make it easier for citizens to 
   protect themselves. 
 
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