Re: whitehouse queries files on political enemies

[Hallam-Baker <hallam@ai.mit.edu>]

Bill Frantz wrote:
> 
> OBCrypto: William Safire, in his 6/10/96 column on this subject, says,
> "Under Freeh, the anti-encryption zealot hand-picked by the man whose name
> was used on the phony requisitions, the Justice Department's most
> confidential file room has become a walk-in closet for White House pols."

Well Safire should know about Nixon type dirty tricks, after all he worked for
Nixon as a speachwriter and wrote a book about it:-

http://econ158.berkeley.edu/williamsafire.html
http://econ158.berkeley.edu/haldeman.html


>From a pro-crypto point of view it is more advantageous to accept the
administration position that the requests were made in error. After all that 
demonstrates that the govt. is not capable of admininistering sensitive 
information properly even when it is what must surely count as the most 
sensitive information the govt. tracks. If the system is ineffective in 
protecting the files of the party workers of opposed factions then it is 
unlikely to protect the secrecy of less sensitive files.

This aside the general problem is one of authorisation. The current USGovt 
security system is based on principles of security clearances and "need to 
know". But how does the guardian of various personal files know _who_ needs to 
know?

This is a _very_ hard problem, one that I for one would like an answer to.
Unfortunately the USGovt is not like a computer system where the authorisation
policy for information is enforced via ACLs or the like. Perhaps it should be 


		Phill