FYI folks, I just sent this electronically and would like to urge you to express your feelings to the government officials as well. Don't copy my letter, express your own thoughts, but please do let them know how you feel about it even if you disagree with me :) Jim Sent electronically to: Representative Maria Cantwell, D-Washington - cantwell@eff.org Representative Lee Hamilton, D-Indiana - hamilton@eff.org Chair of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs The President of the United States - president@whitehouse.gov The Vice President of the United States - vice.president@whitehouse.gov The Cypherpunk mailing list of Internet - cypherpunks@toad.com Greetings, I wish to express my concerns about a current issue that has drawn a lot of attention from the computing world. The issue is that of encryption and the Clipper chip. We Americans pride ourselves with the freedoms guaranteed us by the Constitution and it is freedom upon which this entire country is based. The Clipper chip threatens this freedom in an unprecedented way. I, as a professional computer programmer, am frightened by the desire of some of our Congress members to eliminate all forms of encryption except special government approved devices such as Clipper. Although I do not disapprove of the chip, nor of the ability to break it with the proper search warants, I do disapprove of what the success of this chip will bring. If Clipper succeeds then it will promote the wholesale outlawing of any encryption method. This will be undesirable for four reasons: 1. Right to privacy will be compromised if the citizens of the United States can not take steps to keep information such as financial transactions and personal data from prying eyes. 2. By requiring ONE and only one means of encryption you would be making it easier for those who wish to do harm to decypher our information. A cryptoanalyist would have a much easier time if he is guaranteed to know the form of encryption used. 3. The Clipper chip will do nothing to deter crime. A criminal smart enough to use encryption will be smart enough to use a safe code and not stupid enough to use the Clipper chip that he knows the governent can decode. The gangsters of the early to mid 20th century used nothing that could be called encryption and yet talked freely about taking packages for delivery and erasing people. The same would be true today. In fact, there are programs that exist TODAY and are readily available that will hide an encrypted message in an otherwise innocent picture. This method of hiding information is nearly undetectable. Considering this, criminals would still use cyphers if they so desired and only law-abiding citizens would be forced to make their private information vulnerable. 4. The only thing worse than having no means of privacy is to give the people a device they trust implicitly which is, in reality, not secure. Imagine a classified document from the millitary that is encrypted by the Clipper chip falling into the hands of an enemy who can decrypt it. In answer to those who say breaking the Clipper code is not practical I'd ask "Why was Clipper designed for non- classified information?" The answer is, of course, that Clipper is not secure enough to trust to protect our most sacred documents. I want to thank those of you who are working to block the "slaughter" of freedom and the elimination of American's rights to use encryption as they see fit and to implore anyone whose eyes fall upon this document to support it as well. Thank you for your time and consideration. Respectfully Jim Sewell 1209 Virginia Street Key West, Florida 33040 -- Tantalus Inc. Bringing people together Jim Sewell-KD4CKQ 2407 N. Roosevelt Blvd. to have a little fun. Internet: jims@mpgn.com Key West, FL 33041 CIS: 71061,1027 (305) 293-8100 "We keep coding and coding and coding..."