EFF Press Release 04/04/94 * DISTRIBUTE WIDELY * At two briefings, Feb. 4, 1994, the Clinton Administration and various agencies gave statements before a Congressional committee, and later representatives of civil liberties organizations, industry spokespersons and privacy advocates. The Electronic Frontier Foundation's position, based on what we have seen and heard from the Administration today, is that the White House is set on a course that pursues Cold War national security and law enforcement interests to the detriment of individual privacy and civil liberties. The news is grim. The Administration is: * not backing down on Clipper * not backing down on key escrow * not backing down on selection of escrow agents * already adamant on escrowed key access procedures * not willing to elminate ITAR restrictions * hiding behind exaggerated threats of "drug dealers" and "terrorists" The material released to the industry and advocacy version of the briefing have been placed online at ftp.eff.org (long before their online availability from goverment access sites, one might add). See below for specific details. No information regarding the Congressional committee version of the briefing has been announced. EFF Director Jerry Berman, who attended the private sector meeting, reported the following: "The White House and other officials briefed industry on its Clipper chip and encryption review. While the review is not yet complete, they have reached several policy conclusions. First, Clipper will be proposed as a new Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) next Wednesday. [Feb. 9] It will be "vountary" for government agencies and the private sector to use. They are actively asking other vendors to jump in to make the market a Clipper market. Export licensing processes will be speeded up but export restrictions will not be lifted in the interests of national security. The reason was stated bluntly at the briefing : to frustrate competition with clipper by other powerful encryption schemes by making them difficult to market, and to "prevent" strong encryption from leaving the country thus supposedly making the job of law enforcement and intelligence more difficult. Again in the interest of national security. Of course, Clipper will be exportable but they would not comment on how other governments will view this. Treasury and NIST will be the escrow agents and Justice asserted that there was no necessity for legislation to implement the escrow procedures. "I asked if there would be a report to explain the rationale for choosing these results - we have no explanation of the Administration's thinking, or any brief in support of the results. They replied that there would be no report because they have been unable to write one, due to the complexity of the issue. "One Administation spokesperson said this was the Bosnia of Telecommunications. I asked, if this was so, how, in the absense of some policy explanation, could we know if our policy here will be as successful as our policy in Bosnia?" The announcements, authorization procedures for release of escrowed keys, and q-and-a documents from the private sector briefing are online at EFF. They are: "Statement of the [White House] Press Secretary" [White House] file://ftp.eff.org/pub/EFF/Policy/Crypto/wh_press_secy.statement "Statement of the Vice President" [very short - WH] file://ftp.eff.org/pub/EFF/Policy/Crypto/gore_crypto.statement "Attorney General Makes Key Escrow Encryption Announcements" [Dept. of Just.] file://ftp.eff.org/pub/EFF/Policy/Crypto/reno_key_escrow.statement "Authorization Procedures for Release pf Emcryption Key Components in Conjunction with Intercepts Pursuant to Title III/State Statutes/FISA" [3 docs. in one file - DoJ] file://ftp.eff.org/pub/EFF/Policy/Crypto/doj_escrow_intercept.rules "Working Group on Data Security" [WH] file://ftp.eff.org/pub/EFF/Policy/Crypto/interagency_workgroup.announce "Statement of Dr. Martha Harris Dep. Asst. Secy. of State for Polit.-Mil. Affairs: Encryption - Export Control Reform" [Dept. of State] file://ftp.eff.org/pub/EFF/Policy/Crypto/harris_export.statement "Questions and Answers about the Clinton Administration's Encryption Policy" [WH] file://ftp.eff.org/pub/EFF/Policy/Crypto/wh_crypto.q-a These files are available via anonymous ftp, or via WWW at: http://www.eff.org/ in the "EFF ftp site" menu off the front page. Gopher access: gopher://gopher.eff.org/ Look in "EFF Files"/"Papers and Testimony"/"Crypto" All 7 of these documents will be posted widely on the net immediately following this notice. -- Stanton McCandlish * mech@eff.org * Electronic Frontier Found. OnlineActivist F O R M O R E I N F O, E - M A I L T O: I N F O @ E F F . O R G O P E N P L A T F O R M O N L I N E R I G H T S V I R T U A L C U L T U R E C R Y P T O