cyber FOIA/settlement e-mail

[bill payne <billp@nmol.com>]

Friday February 27, 1998 11:18 AM

By e-mail and US mail

Lieutenant General Kenneth A Minihan, USAF
Director, National Security Agency
National Security Agency
9800 Savage Road
Fort George G. Meade, MD 20755-6000

Dear General Minihan:

Purposes of the letter are to

1  request information under the Freedom of Information Act
2  explore settlement possibilities of our current lawsuit.

In about 1986 Sandia National Laboratories assigned me the 
task of  design and construction of a Comprehensive Test Ban 
Treaty seismic data authenticator.

In the initial stages of the project, Sandia cryptographer 
Gustavus Simmons attempted to convince both Sandia 
management and NSA employees Tom White, Mark Unkenholtz,
and Ed Georgio that a form of public key authentication should 
replace NSA employee Ronald Benincasa�s National Seismic
Station/Unmaned Seismic Observatory 11-bit data authentication
algorithm.

My Sandia supervisor John Holovka and project leader H B [Jim]
Durham ordered me to write a paper explaining public key 
cryptography.

This paper,  RSA ENCRYPTION, along with my SAND report
describing my implementation of Benincasa�s algorithm and
filings in our lawsuit, now appear on Internet at
http://www.jya.com/index.htm, click CRYPTOME, then OpEd,
then http://www.jya.com/whprsa.htm.

Sandia explored the merits of switching from Benincasa�s
algorithm to a public key-based authentication method suggested
by Simmons.

For Sandia�s evaluation of the merits of public key, electronic tagging,
and Bureau of Engraving and Printing projects ,  I bought for Sandia 
samples both the Cylink CY1024 and AT&T A & B two chip sets for
modulo m arithmetic computations.

NSA employee Tom White sent me a copy of the SECRET classified
NSA report on IBM�s hardware public key chip FIREFLY.

I wrote in my tutorial paper

  RSA hardware computations

  The slow speed of software RSA computations plus the potential
  wide use prompted several companies to build chips which compute
  modular arithmetic to at least several hundred bits.  Most of
  these chips "cascade" to compute with a larger number of bits.

  Corporations involved in building these chips are

     1  IBM  Firefly

     2  AT&T

     3  Motorola (apparently a three chip set)

     4  Cylink   Pittway-First alert

     5  Sandia Labs (Algorithm M and predecessor chip)

  Details of the IBM chip is classified.  AT&T as of July 1987 has
  not released details of their chip.  Little information is
  available on the Motorola chip set.

  The Cylink chip is commercially available.  Its price dropped
  from $1,500 to $600 each in June 1987.  Data is transferred to
  and from the chip with serial shift register communication.

  The early Sandia chip was limited in speed.  The replacement
  chip is cascadeable, communicates with 8 or 16 bits parallel,
  matches the speed of the Cylink chip, but is not out of
  fabrication.

  Rumors circulate that there is about an order of magnitude
  performance difference between some of these chips.

  These hardware chips improve exponentiation speed about 3 orders
  of magnitude over software implementation benchmarked on an Intel
  8086 family microcomputer.

Whitfield Diffie writes about both the Cylink and Sandia chips.  And
is quoted at  http://www.aci.net/kalliste/nukearse.htm.

Sandia had terrible luck with its public key chips.  

I reported SOME of the troubles to Electronic Engineering Times editor
Loring Wirbel [http://techweb.cmp.com/eet/823/] on March 23, 1994.

        Dr. John Wisniewski was a supervisor at Sandia's Center for
        Radiation-hardened Microelectronics.  Wisniewski was a graduate
        student at Washington State University in about 1975.  I was a
        professor at WSU.

        Wisniewski knows all about the failing Sandia chips in the
nuclear
        arsenal.  I took notes on February 13, 1993.  Wisniewski
reviewed
        the problems again for me.

             1    No quality initiative.  Each chip lot had a different
                  process.
             2    Overall yield - 40-50%.  Down to 10% after packaging.
             3    Metalization problems.  No planarization.  No flow of
                  glass.  Couldn't use high temperature.  Step coverage
                  problems.  Layed down over tension.  100% field
returns
                  over several years.
             4    Sandia would store lots of parts for replacements.

        Sandia management made the decision to place low yield parts in
        the nuclear arsenal.  Sandia must meet DOD schedules management
        reasoned.  Hundreds of millions spent on CRM.  Sandia must show
        productivity.

        Wisniewski told me that low yield chip test survivors are those
which
        the tests failed to detect failures.  Wisniewski will talk. 
503-625-
        6408.  Wisniewski now works for Intel in Oregon.  Have
Wisniewski
        tell you about the fire in the CRM clean room!

Sandia supervisor Jerry Allen later told me it cost $300,000 each to
remove
Sandia�s failing chips at Pantex from a nuclear bomb.

NSA apparently is biased toward hardware implementations of
cryptographic
and authentication algorithms.  As opposed to software implementation.

NSA representatives and Sandia management decided not to use a public
key authentication scheme for its CTBT seismic data authenticator
because
of all of the problems with implementing public key algorithms.

But NSA surely has spent MUCH MONEY on public key chip implementations.

NSA is promoting its Clipper crypto chips as described at
http://cpsr.org/dox/clipper.html.

And we get some information about technical specifications of NSA�s
Clipper
chip at http://www.us.net/softwar/http://www.us.net/softwar/clip.html

  Clipper Chip Information

  MYK-78 CLIPPER CHIP ENCRYPTION/DECRYPTION  ON A CHIP 

     1 micron double level metal CMOS technology 
     0.35 watts power 
     28 pin plastic leaded chip carrier (PLCC) package 
     Transistor to transistor logic (TTL) interface 
     Chip ID, family key and device unique key are installed at
programming. 
     Chip ID, family key and device unique key are installed at
programming           facility and are completely transparent to the
user.

Therefore, Under the provision of the Freedom of Information Act, 
5 USC 552, I am requesting access to: 

1  Copies of all invoices from

	A   AT&T
	B   Motorola
	C   IBM
	D  Sandia National Laboratories

to NSA for payments for developing ANY public key-related chips between
January 1, 1980 and February 27, 1998.

2  Copies of all invoices to NSA from ANY corporation involved in
development
of ANY Clipper chip-related hardware between January 1, 1980 and 
February 27, 1998.

The public has a right to know how much NSA spent on TRYING monoploize
the crypto
business.

If there are any fees for searching for, or copying, the records I have 
requested, please inform me before you fill the request.

As you know, the Act permits you to reduce or waive the fees when the 
release of the information is considered as "primarily benefiting the
public."  
I believe that this requests fits that category and I therefore ask that
you waive 
any fees.

If all or any part of this request is denied, please cite the specific
exemption(s) 
which you think justifies your refusal to release the information and
inform 
me of your agency's administrative appeal procedures available to me
under the law.

I would appreciate your handling this request as quickly as possible,
and I look 
forward to hearing from you within 20 working days, as the law
stipulates.

With respect to our current FOIA lawsuit, I feel that we should settle
this
unfortunate matter.

I see from your biography at  http://www.nsa.gov:8080/ and
http://www.nsa.gov:8080/dirnsa/dirnsa.html that you are

         1979   Distinguished Graduate
         Master of Arts degree in National Security Affairs 
         Naval Postgraduate School 
         Monterey, California

One of my former M.S. and Ph.D students in Computer Science,
Ted Lewis, is currently the chairman of Computer Science at
Naval Postgraduate School [http://www.friction-free-economy.com/].

Small world.

But I think that this emphasizes that WE SHOULD all be on the same side.
Not engaged in a conflict in US federal court.  Or on Internet.

NSA attempts to withhold requested information are possibly unwise.  

In our wired world the aggrieved know what happened to them.
http://www.wpiran.org/,http://www.netlink.co.uk/users/impact/namir/namirm.html

And moderates in Iran, http://persia.org/khatami/biography.html, appear
want
settlement too.

My family and I have been damaged by these crypto wars.

I ask you that consider fair settlement of damages caused by the
National
Security Agency.

I cannot find your e-mail address on Internet.

Therefore I will forward the e-mail copy of this FOIA/settlement letter
to 
Ray Kammer of NIST [http://www.nist.gov/], who along with the FBI 
[http://www.fbi.gov/, http://www.fbi.gov/fo/nyfo/nytwa.htmand], and NSA 
are trying to control the crypto business so that Kammer can possibly
forward an e-mail copy of the FOIA/Settlement letter to you.

Sincerely,

bill

William Payne
13015 Calle de Sandias
Albuquerque, NM 87111
505-292-7037 [I am not reading e-mail]