NYTimes: Disappearing Cryptography

["Attila T. Hun" <attila@hun.attila.org>]

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    Forwarded to you by Attila T. Hun <attila@hun.attila.org>

July 29, 1997
Giving Away Secrets
By PETER WAYNER
NYTimes OpEd 

BALTIMORE -- Internet hype can turn age-old problems
into new grave threats.  The biggest tempest may be
the concern over the use of encryption, or secret
codes, to scramble information sent over the Internet
and other computer networks.  The use of codes may
thrill people who want to protect the business plans
on their office computers and the love letters they
send by E-mail.  But it worries the Director of the
Federal Bureau of Investigation, Louis J. Freeh, and
other law-enforcement officials.

Mr.  Freeh is right to be concerned that encryption
can limit the ability of law enforcement to gather
electronic evidence from wiretaps and court-ordered
searches.  But he was wrong when he recently told the
Senate Judiciary Committee that "technology and
telecommunications well beyond the contemplation of
the Framers" will bring "a terrible upset of the
balance so wisely set forth in the Fourth Amendment."
In other words, he envisions the balance tipping
against the police, because they will have more
difficulty conducting reasonable searches if more of
the information they are seeking is encrypted.

Yet cryptography wasn't beyond the contemplation of
the Framers, because many of them were skilled code
makers and code breakers themselves.  David Kahn's
book "The Codebreakers" tells how codes have affected
history for more than 3,000 years.  According to Mr.
Kahn, George Washington had to deal with the problem
when a coded message was intercepted in August 1775
from Benjamin Church, a member of the Massachusetts
Congress who was a spy for the British.  The message,
which was finally deciphered, told the English details
of American troop movements.

As Mr.  Kahn reveals, both sides in the Revolutionary
War made extensive use of encryption.  Benedict Arnold
designed the complex code that he used to sell out his
country.

James Lovell of the Continental Congress helped win
the war by breaking the codes used by General
Cornwallis.  After the war, Thomas Jefferson and James
Madison communicated in their own private code.  And
Benjamin Franklin devised his own cipher for sending
dispatches from Europe.

Yet in writing the Bill of Rights, the Founders did
not forbid cryptography, even though they knew how
powerful a tool it could be.  Nor did they suggest
that the police be able to obtain the plain text of a
coded message.  But that could happen under a measure
sponsored by Senator Bob Kerrey of Nebraska, a
Democrat, and Senator John McCain of Arizona, a
Republican.  Under their bill, the key to any code
used to scramble information sent on the Internet
would have to be given to the proper authorities.  The
Clinton Administration supports similar measures.

James Bamford, in "The Puzzle Palace," describes how
the F.B.I.  broke the case of the gangsters who were
communicating without phone calls or letters.  Agents
discovered that the gangsters sent their shirts to Las
Vegas to be dry cleaned -- and that the number of
shirts held the coded message.  No ban on cryptography
on the Internet will be able to thwart creative crooks
like these, but diligent police work can find cracks
in the armor.  This is why the National Research
Council has recommended that Congress invest in
research to help the F.B.I.  better understand
computers and codes.

The F.B.I.  faces a daunting task.  Encryption makes
it impossible for agents to gather all the evidence
they would like.  But the answer is not to regulate,
and in effect destroy, the use of coded messages.
Criminals would probably find a way around the rules,
and the rest of us could lose a powerful tool for
protecting our privacy.

Peter Wayner is the author of "Disappearing
Cryptography."

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