Subject: File 4--Re: Newsday Clipper Story (CuD 6.19)

From: The Advocate <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 28 Feb 1994 13:25:25 -0500 (EST)

>            Newsday, Tuesday, February 22, 1994, Viewpoints
>                   The Clipper Chip Will Block Crime
>                         By Dorothy E. Denning

Before We go any further, let your old friend the Advocate join the
greek chorus,  of people singing their personal respect and admiration
for Dr Denning.  Her work in the Neidorf case was without par and her
commitment to issues in Cyberspace are intellectually rigorous and
passionate.  It thus doubly pains me when such an old and respected
friend seems to have gone astray.

>    Hidden among the discussions of the information highway is a fierce
> debate, with huge implications for everyone.  It centers on a tiny
> computer chip called the Clipper, which uses sophisticated coding to
> scramble electronic communications transmitted through the phone
> system.

Just like other systems already in use for military and government
or commercial transactions.

>
>    The Clinton administration has adopted the chip, which would allow
> law enforcement agencies with court warrants to read the Clipper codes
> and eavesdrop on terrorists and criminals.  But opponents say that, if

or agencies with corrupt motives to spy on virtually every transaction
telephonic or datic  that moves on the information highway.

future expansion of network systems will allow easy access to virtually
all data,  without regard,  and with intrusion, without detection.

> this happens, the privacy of law-abiding individuals will be a risk.
individuals and corporations.

> They want people to be able to use their own scramblers, which the
> government would not be able to decode.

WOuld not be able to decode?  no,  would not be able to decode without
spending some money.  Dr Denning forgets that we spend an estimated
$27 Billion dollars per year on the NSA,  an agency devoted entirely
to signals interception, decryption and analysis.  THis same agency
has been involved in the Clipper developement and has refused to make
any of it's files available and has instead crowded the field with
classified segments.

>    If the opponents get their way, however, all communications on the
> information highway would be immune from lawful interception.  In a

Hardly.  It merely means that interception would require either
more detailed de-crpyption efforts  or attack at sources of
transmission or reception.

These same complaints are repackaged complaints about miranda rights,
the exclusionary rule and every other legal reform of this century.

> world threatened by international organized crime, terrorism, and rogue
> governments, this would be folly.  In testimony before Congress, Donald

International organised crime?  you mean like the Mafia,  whom the
CIA helped set up?  and who work routinely as government agents?

Terrorism?  in this country of 250 million people less the 15 people
per year die on average from terrorist activities.  considering
50,000 americans die every year on the roads,  someone needs to get
their priorities re-aligned.

Rogue governments?  like the libyans, or Iraq and iran?  how will clipper
harm a foreign government?  not to mention these countries are all
paper tigers.  the last time we dealt with traq,  i seem to recall
we waxed their army without breaking a sweat.  i am not worried.

> Delaney, senior investigator with the New York State Police, warned
> that if we adopted an encoding standard that did not permit lawful
> intercepts, we would have havoc in the United States.

But don forgets  that his standard allows un-lawful intercepts.

lets look at this word havoc.  that means a state of chaos or confusion.
If i go to anacostia on a friday night, i would say havoc exists. if i
go into a DC school by day, i could say havoc exists.  when  LA burned
last year havoc ran rampant,  and certainly this had little to do
with the lack of a proper data encryption standard.  The operation
of the polis has little to do with the effectiveness of our secret
police.

>
>    Moreover, the Clipper coding offers safeguards against casual
> government intrusion.  It requires that one of the two components of

Not neccesarily.  Although Dr denning and a team of independent
scientists reviewed the clipper standard,  they are not specialists
in code breaking.  I do not know how immune clipper is to corruption
once partial knowledge is attained.  knowledge of header blocks,
and access to partial keys and key fragments may make closure of
the cryptic circle a simpler proposition then her analysis indicated.

> a key embedded in the chip be kept with the Treasury Department and the

The dept that brought us the Secret service and the ATF?  i don't think
so.

> other component with the Commerce Department's National Institute of
> Standards and Technology.  Any law enforcement official wanting to

who work hand in glove with the NSA?
she forgets a single compromised official may be able to subvert
the entire system as mr Ames so easily demonstrated last week.

> wiretap would need to obtain not only a warrant but the separate
> components from the two agencies.  This, plus the superstrong code and
> key system would make it virtually impossible for anyone, even corrupt
> government officials, to spy illegally.

I think this is optimism in action.

>    But would terrorists use Clipper?  The Justice Department has
would Clipper stop terrorism?  Seriously can anyone guarantee
that this technology will end terrorism?  will clipper end
drug trafficking?

> their calls with their own code systems.  But then who would have
> thought that the World Trade Center bombers would have been stupid
> enough to return a truck that they had rented?

Considering the people who bomber the world trade center were keystone
terrorists, i would hardly hold them up as examples.

I would look at people like Carlos the Jackal,  THe Red Army,
Black September, Islamic Jihad, etc...
These are highly sophisticated, well trained killers,  and far more
effective and dangerous.

>    Court-authorized interception of communications has been essential
> for preventing and solving many serious and often violent crimes,

for all the crime and violence in our society, i doubt law enforcement
is doing a good job.  what we see is another band-aid on serious social
problems.

> including terrorism, organized crime, drugs, kidnaping, and political
> corruption.  The FBI alone has had many spectacular successes that
> depended on wiretaps.  In a Chicago case code-named RUKBOM, they
> prevented the El Rukn street gang, which was acting on behalf of the
> Libyan government, from shooting down a commercial airliner using a
> stolen military weapons system.

Dr Dennings faith is touching here.  The El Rukns  were done in
in part because the government compromised their lawyer.  And also
had several agents inside the organization.  Please a better example
must be out there.

>    To protect against abuse of electronic surveillance, federal
> statutes impose stringent requirements on the approval and execution
> of wiretaps.  Wiretaps are used judiciously (only 846 installed
> wiretaps in 1992) and are targeted at major criminals.

and how many wiretaps are installed il-legally?  considering during the
gulf war the FBI was wire-tapping the homes  of arab-americans
i wonder how well they use the legal process.

also if we are talking 846 wiretaps,  and say, 200 hours of tape
from each, we are talking about 200,000 hours of conversation.
i am certain that the NSA has the facility to de-crypt this number
of calls.  And if they don't why don't they?  they must listen to
foreign conversations,  and i am sure the russians are not so
accomodating as to use clear voice signaling.

>    Now, the thought of the FBI wiretapping my communications appeals to
> me about as much as its searching my home and seizing my papers.
> But the Constitution does not give us absolute privacy from
> court-ordered searches and seizures, and for good reason.  Lawlessness
> would prevail.

But the constitution does not forbid me from keeping safes,  or
cryptic records  or speaking in navajo,  either.  Dr Denning must have
far less faith in the body politic then I do.  besides if you want
to see lawlessness,  look at the beltway on friday afternoon.

>    Encoding technologies, which offer privacy, are on a collision
> course with a major crime-fighting tool: wiretapping.  Now the

wiretapping is a minor crime fighting tool.  for all the law enforcement
personnell we have, and all the cases brought each year,  less then 1%
involve wiretapping to start with.  these same complaints  have been
made about facsimile transmission,  computer data, cell phones
and cars.  technology changes and law enforcement adapts.  this is the
first time, i have ever seen law enforcement try to cripple a technology
befoe it becomes prevalent.

ASk yourself a question Dr Denning.  Cars are used in crime, criminals
often escape from the police.  why shouldn't all cars be restricted
to 35MPH, by design so the police can always capture and pursue?
fast cars, like the ferrari  have not brought chaos to our society.
why should cryptography?

> Clipper chip shows that strong encoding can be made available in a way
> that protects private communications but does not harm society if it
> gets into the wrong hands.  Clipper is a good idea, and it needs

how will clipper prevent the wrong hands from getting strong encoding?
will only outlaws have strong crypto?

> support from people who recognize the need for both privacy and
> effective law enforcement on the information highway.

sure we need law enforcement on the info highway,  but i don't
need a trooper in the back seat to listen to me talk to
my girlfirend as we drive.  i just need a trooper to watch for
speeders and drunk drivers.

Dr Denning was part of the clipper review team,  and as such
may be psychologically and emotionally committed to the project.
I hope her earlier effort shave not clouded her ability to conduct a
dispassionate social and policy analysis.

Also  Louis Freeh  was interviewed by John Markoff in an article in
todays NYT about the return of the Digital Telephony Standard.
Freeh said "If we are to have a peaceful and orderly society,
people will have to sacrifice a little privacy".  I couldn't
believe this.  Didn't  jefferson say something on the lines of
those who sacrifice liberty for a little peace deserve neither?
or was that heinlein?

The other interesting factoid to counter all the discussion on
Terrorism,  Nuclear death threats and Drug Dealing, is that
Aldrich Ames was arrested last week in the biggest spy scandal
this century since the Rosenbergs.  Ames who was the CIA chief of
CounterIntelligence/Soviet-Eastern Division was as well trained in
tradecraft as one can be.

He never used any telephonic encryption, despite total access to
all these devices.

Sorry if the spys aren't using them,  then why do we need a
way to break them?

Your friend
The Advocate.

PS  Advocate prediction #13.  That to push the clipper chip,
supporters will claim that Child pornographers are distributing
Snuff films in unbreakable crypto-form so that they can't be
detected.