Anonymous User says:
Hopefully, this will better moderated than the last clipper event at MIT, where a single disruptive audience member wouldn't keep his !@#$ mouth shut, and augered an NSA technical presentation into a forum for him to preach his political gospel.
Steve Kent, the listed moderator, is a powerful personality. I doubt he's going to allow anyone to bully their way into the discussion. Perry
COMMUNICATIONS FORUM
GOVERNMENT WIRETAPPING, ENCRYPTION AND THE CLIPPER CHIP DEBATE
Thursday, September 29, 1994 4PM MIT MEDIA LAB Bartos Theatre, E15-070, 20 Ames Street, Cambridge, MA 02139
Dorothy Denning, Dept. of Computer Science, Georgetown University Robert Holleyman, Business Software Alliance James Kallstrom, Special Operations Division, FBI Ronald Rivest, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, MIT Moderator: Stephen Kent, Chief Scientist for Security Technology, BBN
The federal government says it is necessary to update America's wiretapping capabilities to keep up with technological advances -- and that not doing so could mean losing the battle against organized crime and terrorism. Last year the Clinton Administration proposed the "Clipper Chip," a data encryption plan which would put the "keys" for decoding phone, fax and computer communications in the hands of the government. The much-publicized plan has met with strong opposition from privacy groups, business executives and computer professionals, and has also been challenged on technical grounds. At the center of the debate is the question of how to balance national and personal security concerns, on the one hand, with the right to privacy and the need to maintain the international competitiveness of businesses that use encoded communications, on the other. Recently, government officials have expressed a willingness to compromise on some features of the Clipper Chip, but the debate continues over what kind of encryption system should be implemented and what role industry should play in the development and use of a new system. This forum brings together representatives of the FBI, the computer software industry, and academic computer scientists who will share their views and concerns about the Clipper Chip and alternative systems of data encryption.