Re: CDT Policy Post 2.27 - No New News on Crypto: Gore Restates

[jim bell <jimbell@pacifier.com>]

At 02:06 PM 7/14/96 -0700, David Sternlight wrote:
>At 2:37 PM -0700 7/14/96, jim bell wrote:
>>At 10:17 AM 7/14/96 -0700, David Sternlight wrote:

>>>Your best shot would be to make sure the part about the system being
>>>voluntary was hard-wired into any legislation or rule-making.
>>
>>Wrong.  Our "best shot" is to ensure that no "key escrow" legislation is
>>adopted, and moreover export restrictions on crypto are eliminated.
>
>Nope. That's some people's preferred shot, but may not be the best one 

Okay, "best" by which definition?

And don't avoid the question:  Am I not free to reject YOUR opinion of what 
the "best" solution is FOR ME?

>or even a realistic one. 

"Realistic"?  Who's definition?


>It's certainly a partisan political advocacy (in the
>sense that people are partisan about this issue, not in the sense of a
>particular political party).

Meaningless tripe.  All you're saying is that people disagree.  People 
disagree about a lot of things; that doesn't legitimize opposing opinions.


> Yet that attitude didn't get any legislation to stop Clipper I.

We didn't NEED "any legislation to stop Clipper I."  Quite the opposite, 
anyone promoting Clipper NEEDS legislation to force it on unwilling citizens.


>My point was very simple--if the government is going to say a system is
>voluntary, make them put it in writing in the rules or legislation.

Why have the "system" in the first place?  No legislation, no system.  Simple.

> We
>failed to do that with Clipper I (when they said in non-rulesmaking
>statements that they had no intention of making escrow mandatory--but
>nobody said "OK. Put it in writing as a formal policy.")

  No, you're misrepresenting the issue:  You're trying to subtly suggest 
that we should have agreed with MOST of the Clipper proposal AS LONG AS it 
was explicitly made voluntary.  (Yet nothing prevents Congress from writing and 
passing a law which prohibits the executive branch of government from making 
escrow mandatory; they haven't done this.)

Quite the contrary:  I don't trust the government to implement any such 
proposal EVEN IF it is, ostensibly, "voluntary."  The voluntary/involuntary 
aspect is an excellent reason to oppose Clipper, but is by no means the only 
one.  Also, I don't trust the government's definition (and dynamically 
changeable interpretation) of the word, "voluntary."    Since Clipper was 
funded with tax dollars stolen from the public its very existence is already 
a violation of the "voluntary" requirement.  The fact that Clipper was 
developed without substantial public (and I mean PUBLIC, not some selected 
committee of bootlickers) input and debate proves that the government knew 
it could get no support for the idea.

One of the recently revealing aspects of the government's dishonesty 
concerning Clipper was a clarification which stated that Clipper telephones 
could not communicate with any crypto telephone that didn't implement key 
escrow.  But as anyone who followed the Beta vs. VHS competition saw, the 
market generally abhors two mutually incompatible standards, particularly if 
a certain level of compatibility  is required or is at least desirable, and 
particularly if there is no good reason to maintain BOTH those standads.  
The main disadvantages to maintaining two tape formats was the inconvenience 
of sharing tapes with people who had the opposite format, the requirement 
that retail stores maintain two stocks, and the requirement that rental 
people support both formats.  There were no powerful incentives to maintain 
two standards, and thus one had to die.

 Crypto telephones, by definition, need to be far more compatible with each 
other than VCR machines.  They must actually talk to each other.   Imagine a 
world in which there were two different crypto formats, and for stupid 
political reasons they were entirely incompatible:  System "A" couldn't talk 
to system "B."  What would happen? 
 It's obvious:  One format would kill the other.  People wouldn't tolerate 
the compatibility.    The US Government wanted the surviving system to be 
Clipper, and to accomplish this they used stolen tax dollars to secretly 
develop a system that they hoped would nip the potential competing systems 
in the bud.  It didn't work, of course, but it is clear what they tried to 
do.   

If, on the other hand, there was no impediment to system "A" talking to 
system "B", both systems could easily co-exist.  A few suckers would buy 
Clipper phones; the rest of us would insist on good encryption.  Clipper 
would eventually die, just as Beta VCR's eventually did.  The government 
understands this, that's why they inserted the requirement for incompatibility.


>. As a result, many
>in government even at the higher policy-making levels are still calling for
>mandatory escrow. Had it been in the rules, it's less likely they could
>have overtly gone against a rules-making covenant/compromise.

Hmmmm...  I thought Congress made arming the Contras in Nicaragua explicitly 
illegal.  Yet Ollie North got away with it, effectively.  What is it that 
makes you so certain that Government has gotten any more honest in the past 
10 years?


>It's simple pragmatic regulatory politics. 

And that's exactly the problem!  That's because it's also wrong.  We don't 
need to be "pragmatic" by YOUR definition.

>It's how the system works,

Actually, in the past the system has "worked" by suckering in the public, in 
exactly the way you're attempting to do.  Tricking them into supporting 
things that were bad for them.  Remember the "Gulf of Tonkin Resolution"?

> and
>using the system itself to achieve one's goals is one of the more powerful
>techniques around. You don't have to like it, but you do have to decide
>whether you'd rather be "right" or get the result.

In a sense, we ALREADY have "the result," or at least a substantial fraction 
of it.  Development of domestic crypto is ostensibly free.  The only thing 
desired further in the elimination of any residual restrictions, WITHOUT 
letting the government set up any sort of key-escrow system, voluntary OR 
involuntary.

As far as I can see, cooperation at this point with the pro-GAK forces can 
only hurt the cause.

Jim Bell
jimbell@pacifier.com