C'punks: There is another Professor Denning who is chair of a CS department in the Washington DC area. Here is a position paper that was published in a packet distributed at the 1992 Computers, Freedom, and Privacy conference (CFP-2) Washington DC. It is interesting to contrast this with the support for GAK that the other Prof. Denning supported publicly. Of course, this is dated, and the positions held may no longer be current. BTW: does anyone know the RSA keylength used in Lotus Notes? ===============begin quoted material================ From: pjd@cs.gmu.edu (Peter J. Denning) Subject: How's this? To: denning@cs.georgetown.edu, hoffman@seas.gwu.edu Date: Tue, 21 Jan 92, 10:41:46 EST PUBLIC POLICY FOR THE 21ST CENTURY A position statement Peter J. Denning DRAFT 1/22/92 To plan for the 21st century, must begin with an understanding of the current clearing in which we live and work and then anticipate the emerging clearing. Our public policy must be appropriate to the times. The clearing is a metaphor for the space of assumptions, agreements, and traditions in which a community of people live and act. The name recalls a clearing in a forest: a space among dense trees with more light and with more freedom of action than elsewhere in the forest, a space to dwell in and chart a course to other parts of the forest. The clearing is not fixed: it shifts as the inhabitants and other influences change the environmental conditions. Starting around 1850, people of many countries looked to their governments to regulate commerce, erase inequality, and build societies of better human beings. For over a hundred years, many people from peasents to intellectuals had faith that strong governments would bring them a better life. This faith was part of the clearing in which communist governments flourished. Although the United States took an anticommunist stand, the same faith fostered a strong government that promised salvation by great national programs including Social Security, Welfare, Food Stamps, the War on Poverty, and the Great Society. This faith is now shattered. People no longer trust that Powerful Government can deliver a better life. The dramatic collapse of communism in Europe and the Soviet Union illustrates this, as does the growing disillusionment of the American people with federal, state, and local governments. Disillusionment does not stop people from demanding that government provide more, but they now have serious doubts that it can or will. But the poor track record of Powerful Governments is not the only reason for the shift in the clearing. Information technology has accelerated the process. Communications that took weeks in the last century now take fractions of a second. Business success depends on what happens around the globee, not on local conditions. Radio, TV, telephone, fax, and now email are so common worldwide that not even a Powerful Government can control what information its citizens have. Because the space of opportunity for people to engage in transactions has been so enormously enlarged in the past decade, faith in marketplace democracies is on the rise worldwide. Correspondingly, faith in central management mechanisms is on the decline. The shift of the clearing brings with it a shift of the power of institutions. Government institutions tend to try to hold on to their power by regulatory coercion to enforce the old ways. This can produce big tensions which if not alleviated can produce breakage. Nowhere can this be seen more clearly than in cryptographic technology. This technology provides mechanisms for digital signatures, authentication, electronic money, certificates, and private communication -- offeringla way for standard business practices based on paper to be shifted to electronic media. The success of workldwide enterprises depends on this shift being completed rapidly and effectively. As more people realize this, the momentum for incorporating cryptographic technology into the information infrastructure is increasing. But in the United States, the National Security Agency has been given the authority to regulate cryptography. This authority was granted in another time, in a clearing when the success of the country depended on the ability of its government to gather intellegence and to communicate in secret. These premises made sense in a world where most of the power resided in governments. But the world is changing. Much economic power is now accumulating in large, apolitical, transnational corporations. These organizations place their own concerns and strategies ahead of those of the governments of the countries in which they do business. Like governments, they are interested in gathering intellegence about competitors and in conducting business in private. Unlike governments, they want open access to the technologies of authentification, electronic money, digital signatures, and certificates that will allow them to conduct business transactions accross the network. So the old notion of national power and national security are increased when government has the sole right to gather intellegence and to encipher communications no longer holds. Now the strength of the country depends not only on its government but on its corporations. The old premises have fallen away in this new reality, but the old policy remains. It is time to rethink that policy before tensions between the threatened government and corporations produce significant social tension and perhaps breakage. A new policy aligned with the new clearing would be for the National Security Agency to make its expertise available to the private sector, encabling markets to flourish in a worldwide information medium. Information technology in producing a clearing in which individuals and corporations are key players besides government. Any attempt by government to control the flow of information over networks will be ignored or met with outright hostility. There is no practical way that government can control information except information directly involved in the business of governing. It should not try. ===============end quoted material======================= Pat Pat Farrell Grad Student pfarrell@cs.gmu.edu Department of Computer Science George Mason University, Fairfax, VA Public key availble via finger #include <standard.disclaimer>