Subject: File 1--Time Magazine on Clipper

From: Dave Banisar <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 6 Mar 1994 14:13:18 -0500

Time Magazine, March 14, 1994

TECHNOLOGY

WHO SHOULD KEEP THE KEYS?

The U.S. government wants the power to tap into every phone, fax and
computer transmission

BY PHILIP ELMER-DEWITT

... (general background)

... (general info on techo advances)

  Thus the stage was set for one of the most bizarre technology-policy
battles ever waged: the Clipper Chip war. Lined up on one side are the three-
letter cloak-and-dagger agencies -- the NSA, the CIA and the FBI -- and key
policymakers in the Clinton Administration (who are taking a surprisingly
hard line on the encryption issue). Opposing them is an equally unlikely
coalition of computer firms, civil libertarians, conservative columnists and
a strange breed of cryptoanarchists who call themselves the cypherpunks.

  At the center is the Clipper Chip, a semiconductor device that the NSA
developed and wants installed in every telephone, computer modem and fax
machine. The chip combines a powerful encryption algorithm with a ''back
door'' -- the cryptographic equivalent of the master key that opens
schoolchildren's padlocks when they forget their combinations. A ''secure''
phone equipped with the chip could, with proper authorization, be cracked by
the government. Law-enforcement agencies say they need this capability to
keep tabs on drug runners, terrorists and spies. Critics denounce the Clipper
-- and a bill before Congress that would require phone companies to make it
easy to tap the new digital phones -- as Big Brotherly tools that will strip
citizens of whatever privacy they still have in the computer age.

  In a Time/CNN poll of 1,000 Americans conducted last week by Yankelovich
Partners, two-thirds said it was more important to protect the privacy of
phone calls than to preserve the ability of police to conduct wiretaps. When
informed about the Clipper Chip, 80% said they opposed it.

  The battle lines were first drawn last April, when the Administration
unveiled the Clipper plan and invited public comment. For nine months
opponents railed against the scheme's many flaws: criminals wouldn't use
phones equipped with the government's chip; foreign customers wouldn't buy
communications gear for which the U.S. held the keys; the system for giving
investigators access to the back-door master codes was open to abuse; there
was no guarantee that some clever hacker wouldn't steal the keys. But in the
end the Administration ignored the advice. In early February, after computer-
industry leaders had made it clear that they wanted to adopt their own
encryption standard, the Administration announced that it was putting the NSA
plan into effect. Government agencies will phase in use of Clipper technology
for all unclassified communications. Commercial use of the chip will be
voluntary -- for now.

  It was tantamount to a declaration of war, not just to a small group of
crypto-activists but to all citizens who value their privacy, as well as to
telecommunications firms that sell their products abroad. Foreign customers
won't want equipment that U.S. spies can tap into, particularly since
powerful, uncompromised encryption is available overseas. ''Industry is
unanimous on this,'' says Jim Burger, a lobbyist for Apple Computer, one of
two dozen companies and trade groups opposing the Clipper. A petition
circulated on the Internet electronic network by Computer Professionals for
Social Responsibility gathered 45,000 signatures, and some activists are
planning to boycott companies that use the chips and thus, in effect, hand
over their encryption keys to the government. ''You can have my encryption
algorithm,'' said John Perry Barlow, co-founder of the Electronic Frontier
Foundation, ''when you pry my cold dead fingers from my private key.''

... (history of Public Key encryption).

... (history of PGP)

  Rather than outlaw PGP and other such programs, a policy that would
probably be unconstitutional, the Administration is taking a marketing
approach. By using its purchasing power to lower the cost of Clipper
technology, and by vigilantly enforcing restrictions against overseas sales
of competing encryption systems, the government is trying to make it
difficult for any alternative schemes to become widespread. If Clipper
manages to establish itself as a market standard -- if, for example, it is
built into almost every telephone, modem and fax machine sold -- people who
buy a nonstandard system might find themselves with an untappable phone but
no one to call.

  That's still a big if. Zimmermann is already working on a version of PGP
for voice communications that could compete directly with Clipper, and if it
finds a market, similar products are sure to follow. ''The crypto genie is
out of the bottle,'' says Steven Levy, who is writing a book about
encryption. If that's true, even the nsa may not have the power to put it
back.

Reported by David S. Jackson/San Francisco and Suneel Ratan/Washington