December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: Why PGP isn't so ubiquitous (was NRC Session Hiss)
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 9:59 PM 6/3/96, Deranged Mutant wrote: >On 3 Jun 96 at 11:27, Bruce Baugh wrote: > >> Date: Mon, 03 Jun 1996 11:27:33 -0700 >> At 04:33 AM 6/3/96 +0000, Deranged Mutant wrote: >> does, it will happen only after the passage of more draconian anti-privacy >> laws, and the guys working on it will be forced to include sundry backdoor >> stuff or drop it altogether. > >More likely drop it altogether, or be openly admit they were forced >to include GAK (people will want the source, anyway). I can't imagine _any_ set of circumstances which would cause Zimmermann, Atkins (?), Plumb (?), and anyone else who might still be on the PGP development team to include GAK. After all, those heartwarming stories about Burmese rebels using PGP to communicate using laptops in the jungles would then be replaced by: "16 April 1998, A.P., Rangoon, Burma. Internal Security Minister Bopalong Myanmoon announced today that rebel communications were intercepted and decrypted two weeks ago with the cooperation of the International Key Authority. As a result of this raid, 63 rebels were captured, tried, and executed. Visiting Rangoon at the time, U.S. Attorney General Louis Freeh was said to be satisfied that international key escrow was having such positive effects." --Tim May Boycott "Big Brother Inside" software! We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, we know that that ain't allowed. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay(a)got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Licensed Ontologist | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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[NOISE] rec.music.white-power failed 592:33033 FYI
by Rich Graves 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The official result, including the votetaker's explanation for the extraordinary delay (which makes interesting reading), is in news.announce.newgroups, Message-ID <833851386.24895(a)uunet.uu.net>. Or for people who only use Netscape: http://ww2.altavista.digital.com/cgi-bin/news?plain@msg@31323@news%2egroups news:833851386.24895@uunet.uu.net While I think I was one of the people presenting legitimate reasons for voting no (as opposed to all the "VOTE NO ON NAZIS!" -- see news.groups archives), I'm actually disappointed that there were only 592 yes votes. I'd have expected more than the estimated 400 anti-censorship and spam-annoyance reactions. I would urge people NOT to download the 3MB list of votes, as I haven't, because the vast majority of voters had no clue what they were voting on. The majority probably thought it was a secret ballot. The poor votetaker definitely deserves a medal, but PLEASE don't send him appreciative mail; he's getting far too much already. Sent separately to fight-censorship and cypherpunks. Followup discussion, if any, belongs in news.groups ONLY. -rich

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Re: Saw this on CNN: Anonymous Stock tips over IRC as bad??
by Deranged Mutant 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On 3 Jun 96 at 15:18, Jeff Barber wrote: > I trust it won't stun you to find that many, many large and even small > corporations -- including my current employer [*NOT* SecureWare, BTW, > despite the email address] -- actually encourage their employees to buy > stock by offering stock purchase plans as a benefit of employment. They > even make it convenient by deducting purchases from one's paycheck. [..] There's a difference between a) buying stock in your employer's company generally [above example] and b) buying stock in your employer's company because your department is working on something that will raise the stock value etc. etc. --- No-frills sig. Befriend my mail filter by sending a message with the subject "send help" Key-ID: 5D3F2E99 1996/04/22 wlkngowl(a)unix.asb.com (root@magneto) AB1F4831 1993/05/10 Deranged Mutant <wlkngowl(a)unix.asb.com> Send a message with the subject "send pgp-key" for a copy of my key.

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Re: Idea 'bout banning the internet
by Deranged Mutant 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On 3 Jun 96 at 16:16, Blake Wehlage wrote: > What if in the future a country banned the internet and all things that had > to deal with it (ie- telnet, irc). It would be the "underground" thing. Depends. If it were run by people like the Khmer Rouge than anybody who so much as knows how to use a pocket calculator is better off leaving the country. --- No-frills sig. Befriend my mail filter by sending a message with the subject "send help" Key-ID: 5D3F2E99 1996/04/22 wlkngowl(a)unix.asb.com (root@magneto) AB1F4831 1993/05/10 Deranged Mutant <wlkngowl(a)unix.asb.com> Send a message with the subject "send pgp-key" for a copy of my key.

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Re: Something that just crossed my mind. Sorry.
by remailer＠2005.bart.nl 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 10:01 AM 5/31/96 -0700, Sandy wrote: >At 10:35 PM 5/30/96 -0500, snow wrote: > >>It is my position (until proven wrong--please) that larger business DON'T >>want anonymity. They _want_ to be able to track purchases and use of their >>product for several reasons. Let me first claim that I am an employee of a "larger business." Not that unless someone tracks me through the remailers is there any proof of that, but accept for now that it's not outside of the realm of possibility. I wish I could prove you wrong. I can inform you that you are correct, actually. There are large retail companies that track sales data on credit card account numbers and cardholder names in direct violation of any contract you may have with American Express (and possibly Visa and others, I have not seen those contracts). The data they capture is pretty impressive. I'm sure most of you probably get a direct mailing or two from them every now and then, based on your shopping habits. >Two quick answers: > >1) What big business wants and what it would be > willing to accept in order to make sales, are > two different things. While demographic data > are nice, an more robust economy full of big > spenders is better. And demographic data on big spenders is worth more than anonymous cash from people who buy packages of gum. Much more. The best part of the equation is that the big spenders are giving up the demographic information for free, every time they hand over a credit card. You even filter out the gum-buyers because gum-buyers use cash, which you don't track. An economy of big spenders is worthless unless they're in your store. The cards give evidence of who spends in your store, so you target your advertisements accordingly. >2) Big businesses are made up of individuals. > Most individuals would still prefer to have > their own privacy preserved even if they would > prefer less privacy for others. All it takes is one well-positioned executive who values profits more than his own privacy to say "Capture this personal data" and that data gets captured, regardless of who gets fired complaining about it. Trust me. And I value my job more than I value your privacy, which is why this is going out through a remailer. I also shop only with cash, here and elsewhere. Double-blinded e-cash will be the only way to go, if it ever is the way to go.

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Fate of Ecash if RSA is cracked?
by ichudov＠algebra.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hello, After reading Comm. of ACM and Schneier's book about ecash, a question arose: what if the underlying public key cryptographic scheme gets broken somehow? Suppose, for example, that someone discovers an ultra-fast factoring algorithm or something like that. What would happen with all ecash that's been issued? Of course criminals would be able to forge large amounts of authentic-looking ecash, so banks should not be honoring requests to convert e-cash into real cash. I apologize in advance is this question is silly, and will appreciate your corrections. - Igor.

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MOSS vs. S/MIME vs. PGP/MIME Matrix (fwd)
by Adam Shostack 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

----- Forwarded message from Rik Drummond ----- >From ietf-request(a)IETF.CNRI.Reston.VA.US Thu May 30 09:26:53 1996 Message-Id: <v02130500add3465435b8(a)[199.184.212.213]> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Thu, 30 May 1996 08:05:48 -0500 To: ietf-ediint(a)imc.org, Electronic Data Interchange Issues <EDI-L(a)uccvma.ucop.edu>, ietf(a)CNRI.Reston.VA.US Sender: ietf-request(a)IETF.CNRI.Reston.VA.US From: Rik Drummond <drummond(a)onramp.net> Subject: MOSS vs. S/MIME vs. PGP/MIME Matrix Source-Info: From (or Sender) name not authenticated. The EDI over Internet (EDIINT) working group will recommend standards which facilitate "EDI interoperability over Internet - Now" during the third quarter of 1996. Two of the many requirements are the implementation of encryption and signature for EDI transactions using existing standards/products, such as: MOSS, S/MIME, PGP/MIME and DMS. These four standards/products "generally" fit the needs of the EDIINT effort. We must choose those that best fit our requirements. A Comparison Matrix compares the products/standards across over 30 technical and business areas. Please take time to contribute your expertise to the effort by commenting on the existing information. This matrix is the basis for determining which security products/standards/algorithms to use for EDI over Internet. The matrix is also a significant tool for selling our final recommendation to EDI business product development management. The comparison matrix is in html format at http://ftp.sterling.com/edi/ietf-ediint/decision.html. Thank you. Rik Drummond Chair EDIINT ------------------------------------------------------ | Rik Drummond - The Drummond Group | | 5008 Bentwood Ct., Ft. Worth, TX 76132 USA | | Voice: 817 294 7339 Fax: 817 294 7950 | ------------------------------------------------------ ----- End of forwarded message from Rik Drummond ----- -- "It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -Hume

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Re: Arms Trafficker Page Made CNN!
by assassin＠gladstone.uoregon.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Do you have the cnn story on .../arms-trafficker/? Just what mention of it was made? -A.

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e$: Interbank Digital Cash Clearing, Better Living through
by Robert Hettinga 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

--- begin forwarded text Date: Mon, 3 Jun 1996 21:03:16 -0400 To: Multiple Recipients of e$pam <e$pam(a)intertrader.com> From: e$pam(a)intertrader.com (e$pam) Reply-To: e$(a)thumper.vmeng.com X-Comment: To unsubscribe, send an email to e$pam-request(a)intertrader.com X-Comment: containing the command "unsubscribe e$pam" Precedence: Bulk Subject: e$: Interbank Digital Cash Clearing, Better Living through X-orig-from: Robert Hettinga <rah(a)shipwright.com> X-e$pam-source: owner-ecash(a)digicash.com Forwarded by Robert Hettinga ----------------------------------------------------------------------- X-Sender: rah(a)tiac.net Mime-Version: 1.0 Date: Mon, 3 Jun 1996 17:34:31 -0400 To: ecash(a)digicash.com From: Robert Hettinga <rah(a)shipwright.com> Subject: e$: Interbank Digital Cash Clearing, Better Living through Walletware, Microintermediation, Net.Currencies and ECM Sender: owner-ecash(a)digicash.com Precedence: bulk -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- e$: Interbank Digital Cash Clearing, Better Living through Walletware, Microintermediation, Net.Currencies and ECM June 3, 1996 Boston,Massachusetts People have asked me what I think about interbank digital cash clearing, and I say I'm all for it. Flippant comments aside, I'm not sure I can add anything to the discussion, but I'll take a shot at it. It's easy to argue that there's no real need right now for *on-net* interbank clearing, especially with online cash. If you handle the transactions right, the merchant just verifies and deposits cash as it comes in. This works especially well with the underwriter-as-internet-ATM-machine model I like to use in discussion. (I include that here only by reference, as I've beat it to death. The e$ home-page is http://thumper.vmeng.com/rah/ ) If the trustee behind the underwriter is, well, trusted, to do deposits as well as withdrawls, then the "problem" of interbank clearing on the net itself goes away. Actually, we just translate it into "normal" world of book-entry banking transactions, and the trustee does the interbank clearing there. Same as it ever was. In this scenario, if the customer presents a certificate requiring change, the change can be issued in the same transaction as the deposit of the rest of the transaction's proceeds. Frankly, in a world of ubiquitous networks, this is clearly the way to go for merchants of any means whatsoever, because it's completely safe for them, and it doesn't matter who the underwriter of the cash is. With the proper level of software abstraction, it may not even matter what the cash protocol is. However, networks are a long way from ubiquitous, and that means offline transactions for a lot of cases. Fortunately, if we want to think about offline transactions, we can pilfer some more ideas from, as usual, the market for traveller's checks. When a merchant deposits a traveller's check, her bank clears it like any other check. That's possible because not only is the check secured, but it is hard to replicate. Most importantly, American Express offers a virtual guarantee of payment even if the checks are proven to be lost or forged, which speaks volumes about the susceptability of the system to any large-scale fraud. However, in the unlikely event that AmEx goes out of business, the merchant, not the bank, would be left holding the bag, just like she would be with a bounced check. Obviously, the same thing happens with money orders, a market in which there are many more issuers. All banks issue money orders, but traveller's checks require large consumer marketing campaigns, so there are fewer underwriters of them. So, if it is possible to build linkages between digital cash and the checking system through the merchant's bank, we might have another solution. Fortunately, this is no problem. A merchant takes in various forms of off-line cash all day and deposits it electronically at the time she deposits her other money. The bank validates, clears, and deposits the cash right there at the teller/ATM, through it's connections to the net. This is (barely!) analogous to what happens to a traveller's check or money order, which is deposited and sometimes physically flown to the issuer's bank to clear, and paid back to the depositor by fed wire to settle the transaction. Making change for the transactions themselves in this scenario is problematic, but the merchant can just hand back physical cash, just like she does with traveller's checks. An all-electronic variant on this "mixed-money" change method is for the merchant to hand back whatever digital-note change she has, regardless of who issued, and this implies a lot of preconditions, but it's not as scary as it looks, which we'll see in a little bit. Right now, when we talk about the need for interbank clearing, a lot of people seem to be talking about offline cash. As we saw, online clearing is pretty much a geodesic process, because you're connected straight to the underwriter of the cash you're using for the transaction under way. It's hard for me to see any need for on-net intermediaries for online cash, at least for the time being, because the trustee, the actual financial intermediary in the transaction, is hooked into the "physical" financial system of banks, ATM networks, and central-bank fund-wires. I'll talk about on-the-net financial intermediaries a bit later, though, and there might be one wild card, but I'm not sure. In the same way that I claim that certificate-based clearing and settlement is always going to be cheaper than book-entry methods, I think that offline cash is always going to be cheaper at the margin than online cash. The risk of offine transactions is always going to be double-spending, and that has to be traded against convenience, lower cost of not needing net access and the absolute anonymity you can get by not having to ever reveal yourself to even the underwriter of the digital cash in question. My claim of "marginally cheaper" for offline cash is strictly because of the lack of a net connection, but this cost-component will continue to fall into the forseeable future, so it will be less of an issue. Today, however, with only tens of millions of people on the net out of a world population in the billions, off-line digital cash has a significant cost advantage, and as long there's a bank with in a few transactions' proximity to the offline transaction in question, I think it can still be pretty safe to do offline digital cash transactions. Precicely because we're only a transaction-hop or two from an on-line transaction, double spending is reduced to a physical phenomena at the smartcard-to-smartcard level, which is much easier to deal with. The hoary old bugbear people like trot out at times like this, that of a bajillion salami-slice transactions done simultaneously all over the net all at once, goes back under the bed -- or back into the monster closet -- where it belongs. (Speaking of bugbears, remember, the problem of someone stealing a bank's key, and literally printing free money, is more a problem of issuing digital cash batches with expiry dates than anything else. More to the point, the problem belongs to a single underwriter, and not to a robust market with many competing underwriters.) Anyway, the upshot of the double-spending problem is that it assumes a world of strictly offline transactions, which is almost as ludicrous as a world of strictly online transactions. ;-). Any robust and marketable system of digital cash will need to be able to do both. Like I said above, the transaction handling mechanisms are everything in a multi-underwriter, multi-trustee, and even multi-certificate-protocol regime. We need to have a set of standards for digital cash clearing and settlement which makes the actual issuer as transparent as possible to the transaction's participants. After all, that's what we have with checks. The bank the check's drawn on doesn't really matter. To a lesser extent, neither does the issuer of a traveller's check or money order. Who printed the check *certainly* doesn't matter. That's about where we want to be with digital cash. If I want to buy something from you with ecash, the last thing we should care about is the mechanics of the transaction, and *that* includes who the issuer of the cash is, who the trustee is who's going to do the interbank settlement out in the book-entry world, who the protocol designer is who invented the type of cash we're using, who the software developers were who developed my wallet and your register. None of that. We just want to settle the trade. Better living through walletware. That means that we need think about multi-underwriter clearing from the outset, preferrably at the merchant level, and I'm sure that's what Digicash is moving towards. Digicash's walletware and registerware, or anyone else's for that matter, should be able to transact business with ecash of any form, without discrimination. If I spend some ecash with you, your cash register should take any and all combinations of my Deutche-ecash, or my Twain-ecash, or my Finn-ecash, validate them online with their underwriters (whose responsibility for transaction clearing turnaround should make speed a major selling point to their customers), and hand me back change however I want it, choice of underwriter (or not) and all. In fact, if everything works out, and markets for digital cash underwriting become efficient and competitive, then *who* underwrites my ecash becomes less of an issue to me over time. One form of ecash is as good as another, because it all interoperates. So, if we assume that walletware takes different protocols, it seems that the dominant digital cash protocol would be that which operates best from the *underwriter's* standpoint, which is where it should be, since they're the ones whose reputations are being risked, "rented", as it were. Okay. Let's look quite a few years ahead, to a time when most money that comes onto the net stays here and just gets moved around, to digital bearer bonds, or to digital mutual fund certificates, or whatever. Let's say that Tatsuo Tanaka's scenario has come to pass. That is, because the money's not leaving the net as soon as the transaction takes place, like we've been talking about, the digital cash underwriters and trustees, most likely with the knowing collusion of users who want to pay lower purchase discounts, start "creating" money by issuing cash against fractional, instead of 100% reserves. More to the point, to follow Tanaka some more, a panic or two brought about by these shenanigans has caused the underwriters to police themselves by creating some kind of independent currency control for various associations of fractional-reserve underwriters, much in the same way that fractional reserve bank panics were handled prior to the advent of central banking. We may even have several full-blown internet currencies, controlled by currency boards of some kind. I'm not talking about nation-states, here, either. All of this could be done on a private basis. Real live private currencies, offered by an association of digital cash underwriters. This is a *long* way off, but do you see what I'm getting at here? What we end up with is an on-the-net interbank clearing system, doing just what the book entry system does now, only without governments or central banks in the middle. We have intermediaries in the form of a board which manages the quantity of a given private currency based on "foriegn" reserves, that is, the holdings in its member banks in the *other* currencies, which prevents monitary inflation, and that's one place where the "interbank" clearing takes place. In this environment, we also have currency hedgers and speculators, who make (or save) money by trying to figure out where currencies of various kinds are going to go relative to one another. These days we have institutions moving large amounts of currencies around, doing insecure trades on secure networks. However, the technology of digital bearer certificates and ubiquitous public networks could enable a legion of very small autonomous entities to do the same kinds of activity that the big boys do now. So we don't get "disintermediation", which lots of people see right now with the merger of your local savings bank into a big conglomerate, or your local stockbroker getting bought or put out of business by a discount broker or mutual fund. We end up with "microintermediation". Actually, I've written about the same idea elsewhere, of underwriting "bots" providing ubiquitous auction markets for things like personal digital bearer bonds, etc., but in this case we have a bunch of trading 'bots making secondary markets in currency, hedging and speculating on price fluctuations for money, all like a bunch of microscopic George Soroses. Like George Soros and his famous takedown of the EU's exchange mechanism, these bots would be who actually "determine" the price of a given net.currency versus another, and not the net.currency boards at all. Okay. I've wandered way out here on a limb, and I'm going to climb off of it soon, before I either fall or someone cuts it off. :-). However, before I go, let's look at something which actually happened, and which may be a pointer to what could happen again soon, without too much trouble. I'm talking about ecm, or the electronic cash market trading list. Last summer, when I got back from my New Orleans trip, I was up in Montana hanging out while my wife was at an educator's conference, and Lucky Green sends me e-mail about having just sold, for cash, some of the demo "cyberbuck" certificates that Digicash was issuing at the time. I commented about this to cypherpunks, one thing led to another, and the next thing I knew, Rich Lethin had started up a mailing list and set up a protocol for trading these beta-certificates for cash over that list. He named the list ecm. (Send "info ecm" in the body of a message to majordomo(a)ai.mit.edu, if you want to see what the fuss was all about.) It was used sporadically up to the time when, you guessed it, Mark Twain came on line with *actual* digital cash, and people stopped trading beta-certificates altogether. I can't even remember what the last settlement price was, but it was pennies on the dollar. Actually, now that I remember it, there was a period where the beta-certificates were traded for real Mark Twain ecash on someone's web-page and then announced on ecm, but things have pretty much gone moribund on ecm lately. I haven't seen a trade go across in many months. ECM is the "wild-card" exception to using the current banking system for interbank digital cash clearing. The one that I was talking about above, after I said we didn't really need an interbank clearing mechanism on the net itself. If someone wanted "clear" these different versions of ecash on the net some day, they could just take positions in both the Finnish, Mark Twain, and eventually Deutchebank certificates, and run a little currency exchange operation for fun, and maybe profit, between the three by announcing their bid/ask prices on ecm in both certificates. Hint: buy low, sell high. :-). They could even do currency-speculation-by-proxy by taking different positions in these certificates if they wanted to. It may even be that someone could do this and make a living at it, someday, if enough digital cash was used on the net, particularly if they could do it cheaper than it would cost someone to "deposit" their cash, through an underwriter, into their own bank account. Would income or capital gains taxes be considered part of that deposit "cost"? As Francis Urquart (RIP) used to say, "*You* might say that, but *I* couldn't possibly comment." Cheers, Bob Hettinga -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBMbNaLPgyLN8bw6ZVAQHf6QP/aDY1bhj+ZaG/yTGqezDpnuYYn2Gp2lVE QTTb8z5e9CLWDRMfLCEsFYs8OoXaWNa6NWmDTnpM44NuDawzfqmywWV4RIUyTp1B /ArcruU7z1LiCJUFI8XByGwQiGKsqVRVaoybf2QXP2NGeNSYuYol8s6umcmznzbR cXqvCdBMW/s= =YW/2 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah(a)shipwright.com) e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "If they could 'just pass a few more laws', we would all be criminals." --Vinnie Moscaritolo The e$ Home Page: http://www.vmeng.com/rah/ -------------------------------------------------- The e$ lists are brought to you by: Take Your Business Online with Intertrader Ltd, Edinburgh, U.K. Visit http://www.intertrader.com or email info(a)intertrader.com Making Commerce Convenient (tm) - Oki Advanced Products - Marlboro, MA Value-Checker(tm) smart card reader= http://www.oki.com/products/vc.html Where people, networks and money come together: Consult Hyperion http://www.hyperion.co.uk info(a)hyperion.co.uk See your name here. Be a charter sponsor for e$pam, e$, and Ne$ws! See http://thumper.vmeng.com/pub/rah/ or e-mail rah(a)shipwright.com for details... ------------------------------------------------- --- end forwarded text ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah(a)shipwright.com) e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "If they could 'just pass a few more laws', we would all be criminals." --Vinnie Moscaritolo The e$ Home Page: http://www.vmeng.com/rah/

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Editorial on Crypto Policy -- 6/3/1996 Sacramento Bee
by gcjones＠ix.netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Thought y'all might find this interesting: Editorial in The Sacramento Bee, June 3, 1996 --------------------------------------------- THE VALUE OF ENCRYPTION In a report commissioned by Congress, the National Research Council has injected some perspective into the noisy and often uncivil debate over encryption of electronic communications. Although the Clinton administration shows no signs of heeding the NRC's advice, Congress will find the NRC recommendations an excellent guide to national encryption policy. For years, the extremes in the debate over the administration's efforts to restrict the use of encryption have focused on rival bogeys. Intelligence and law enforcement have warned of the specter of terrorist or criminal groups able to use encryption to prevent detection by wiretapping. In reply, civil libertarians opposed to Clinton administration efforts to promote an encryption standard that would leave government agencies with the key to open up all communications to scrutiny have held up the specter of "Big Brother." By contrast, the NRC panel -- which was chaired by Kenneth Dam, a deputy secretary of state in the Reagan administration, and included a distinguished group of former top law enforcement and Pentagon officials -- took a more nuanced approach. The spread of encryption, the panel agreed, will make it harder for spies and cops to listen in on enemies and signals. But the greater terrorist and criminal threat, it concluded, arises from electronic networks vulnerable to tampering. The law enforcement benefit from the wider use of encryption to keep a terrorist hacker from shutting down the air traffic control system or an electronic criminal from looting bank transactions will outweigh the diminished utility of wiretapping. Thus, the panel recommends that national policy promote the use of encryption to protect vital communications systems, such as voice and cellular telephone systems, from intrusion by criminals. To give businesses and individuals confidence in encryption, standards and technology should be driven by the market and by users, not by the government. And because current restrictions on the export of encryption software leave U.S. firms abroad vulnerable and inhibit the use of the best encryption in U.S. products, it also recommends relaxation of those controls. The burgeoning Internet and expanding wireless communications will be essential to the economy's growth over the next generation. But those technologies can never achieve their full potential if commercial transactions and personal communications are vulnerable to interception. The NRC report makes plain that encryption is less of a problem than a solution. Its recommendations provide Congress with a guide to policy at a time that the Clinton administration is paralyzed, its finger in the dike, protecting against a technological flood that it cannot hope to control. Copyright, 1996, The Sacramento Bee -------------------------------- Glenn C. Jones "If you're walkin' on thin ice, you might as well dance." --------------------------------

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