Another Denning's view

["Pat Farrell" <pfarrell@netcom.com>]

C'punks:

There is another Professor Denning who is chair of a CS department
in the Washington DC area. Here is a position paper that was
published in a packet distributed at the 1992 Computers, Freedom, and
Privacy conference (CFP-2) Washington DC.

It is interesting to contrast this with the support for GAK that the
other Prof. Denning supported publicly. Of course, this is dated,
and the positions held may no longer be current.

BTW: does anyone know the RSA keylength used in Lotus Notes?


===============begin quoted material================

From: pjd@cs.gmu.edu (Peter J. Denning)
Subject: How's this?
To: denning@cs.georgetown.edu, hoffman@seas.gwu.edu
Date: Tue, 21 Jan 92, 10:41:46 EST


PUBLIC POLICY FOR THE 21ST CENTURY
A position statement

Peter J. Denning
DRAFT 1/22/92


To plan for the 21st century, must begin with an understanding
of the current clearing in which we live and work and then
anticipate the emerging clearing.  Our public policy must be
appropriate to the times.

The clearing is a metaphor for the space of assumptions,
agreements, and traditions in which a community of people live
and act.  The name recalls a clearing in a forest: a space among
dense trees with more light and with more freedom of action than
elsewhere in the forest, a space to dwell in and chart a course
to other parts of the forest.  The clearing is not fixed: it
shifts as the inhabitants and other influences change the
environmental conditions.

Starting around 1850, people of many countries looked to their
governments to regulate commerce, erase inequality, and build
societies of better human beings.  For over a hundred years,
many people from peasents to intellectuals had faith that strong
governments would bring them a better life.  This faith was part
of the clearing in which communist governments flourished.
Although the United States took an anticommunist stand, the same
faith fostered a strong government that promised salvation by
great national programs including Social Security, Welfare, Food
Stamps, the War on Poverty, and the Great Society.

This faith is now shattered.  People no longer trust that
Powerful Government can deliver a better life.  The dramatic
collapse of communism in Europe and the Soviet Union illustrates
this, as does the growing disillusionment of the American people
with federal, state, and local governments.  Disillusionment
does not stop people from demanding that government provide
more, but they now have serious doubts that it can or will.

But the poor track record of Powerful Governments is not the
only reason for the shift in the clearing.  Information
technology has accelerated the process.  Communications that
took weeks in the last century now take fractions of a second.
Business success depends on what happens around the globee, not
on local conditions.  Radio, TV, telephone, fax, and now email
are so common worldwide that not even a Powerful Government can
control what information its citizens have.  Because the space
of opportunity for people to engage in transactions has been so
enormously enlarged in the past decade, faith in marketplace
democracies is on the rise worldwide.  Correspondingly, faith in
central management mechanisms is on the decline.

The shift of the clearing brings with it a shift of the power of
institutions.  Government institutions tend to try to hold on to
their power by regulatory coercion to enforce the old ways.
This can produce big tensions which if not alleviated can
produce breakage.

Nowhere can this be seen more clearly than in cryptographic
technology.  This technology provides mechanisms for digital
signatures, authentication, electronic money, certificates, and
private communication -- offeringla way for standard business
practices based on paper to be shifted to electronic media.  The
success of workldwide enterprises depends on this shift being
completed rapidly and effectively.  As more people realize this,
the momentum for incorporating cryptographic technology into the
information infrastructure is increasing.

But in the United States, the National Security Agency has been
given the authority to regulate cryptography.  This authority
was granted in another time, in a clearing when the success of
the country depended on the ability of its government to gather
intellegence and to communicate in secret.  These premises made
sense in a world where most of the power resided in
governments.  But the world is changing.  Much economic power is
now accumulating in large, apolitical, transnational
corporations.  These organizations place their own concerns and
strategies ahead of those of the governments of the countries in
which they do business.  Like governments, they are interested
in gathering intellegence about competitors and in conducting
business in private.  Unlike governments, they want open access
to the technologies of authentification, electronic money, digital
signatures, and certificates that will allow them to conduct
business transactions accross the network.

So the old notion of national power and national security are
increased when government has the sole right to gather
intellegence and to encipher communications no longer holds.
Now the strength of the country depends not only on its government
but on its corporations.  The old premises have fallen away in
this new reality, but the old policy remains.  It is time to
rethink that policy before tensions between the threatened
government and corporations produce significant social tension
and perhaps breakage.

A new policy aligned with the new clearing would be for the
National Security Agency to make its expertise available to the
private sector, encabling markets to flourish in a worldwide
information medium.

Information technology in producing a clearing in which
individuals and corporations are key players besides
government.  Any attempt by government to control the flow of
information over networks will be ignored or met with outright
hostility.  There is no practical way that government can
control information except information directly involved in the
business of governing.  It should not try.

===============end quoted material=======================

Pat

Pat Farrell      Grad Student                 pfarrell@cs.gmu.edu
Department of Computer Science    George Mason University, Fairfax, VA
Public key availble via finger          #include <standard.disclaimer>