Subject: File 5--Newsday's Encryption and Law Enforcement (Re: CuD 6.19)

From: [email-masked](Haig Hovaness)
Date: 3 Mar 1994 12:12:08 -0500

With all due respect to Professor Denning, I offer the following
observations in response to the material in her recent posting.

1. Professor Denning's views are representative of a small minority in
the US academic community.  However, through her energetic campaign to
promote pro-Clipper arguments, a casual observer of the debate would
conclude that her position is representative of a substantial segment of
academic opinion.  This was especially evident in the ACM Communications
"dialogue" on Clipper, in which Professor Denning's comments occupied
almost half of the editorial space.

2. Professor Denning's efforts to advance her views are not limited to
journalistic advocacy and Usenet postings.  Her presence on the ACM
committee studying Clipper has contributed to the success of the
pro-Clipper faction in deadlocking the committee, and thus preventing
the largest computing professional society from taking an anti-Clipper
position, a position that would reflect the sentiments of the majority
of the membership.

3. Professor Denning consistently makes generous assumptions about the
proper and lawful actions of government officials - assumptions that
anyone familiar with recent American history knows to be naive.  For
example, the political manipulation of information gathered by J. Edgar
Hoover, former Director of the F.B.I. is common knowledge.

4. Professor Denning relies heavily on anecdotal evidence of crimes
"prevented" through communications intercepts without presenting accurate
data on the (very small) number of crimes in which the intercept was
essential to the success of law enforcement.  Others have posted the
figures, and they suggest that the practical value of such intercepts is
greatly overstated.

5. Professor Denning maintains that secure encryption is a difficult
technology to master and is not readily available to the general public.
In view of the existence of PGP, and the likely availability of its
voice-scrambling successor, this is a ludicrous claim.

6. Professor Denning offers no explanation for how a US national
standard restricting encryption can be viable in the context of
worldwide voice and data communications.  How can the US government
possibly assert control of information packets crossing US "cyberspace?"

7. Professor Denning omits to mention that polls reveal that the
majority of the US public are opposed to telephone wiretaps.  All
available evidence suggests that Clipper would never survive a public
referendum.

8. Professor Denning neglects to mention that the entire commercial
sector of the US computing industry is united in opposition to Clipper.
Moreover, much of the business community is also hostile to the concept
of Government interception of business communications.

9. Professor Denning's arguments are ultimately authoritarian.  She
believes that the judgement of government officials must carry greater
weight than the will of the people.  This is a profoundly
anti-democratic position.

Haig Hovaness
Pelham Manor, NY
[email-masked]