Ron Rivest sez:

Hi Dorothy --

Fine till here. :-)

Thanks for sending me a copy of your editorial. But I find the reasoning you present misleading and unpersuasive.

I found it subtle and persuasive.

First, you argue that the clipper chip will be a useful law enforcement tool. Given the small number of currently authorized wiretaps per year (under 1000) and the ease of using alternative encryption technology or superencryption, it seems plausible to me that law enforcement could expect at most ten "successful" clipper wiretaps per year. This is a pretty marginal basis for claiming that clipper will "block crime".

We agree here. Unless the use of other, harder methods are explicitly denied Clipper makes no sense at all. It is too easy to compete with. Just come up with something cheaper that doesn't require escrow and sell the thing. Poof Clipper. Clipper is alive I think for other reasons. The obvious conjecture is the ratio of unauthorized to authorized wiretaps each year. It is not the authorized ones that has the various intelligence gathering orgainizations worried. At best it can be a conjecture but I am certainly of the belief that if LE or NS wanted to find a reason to nail one for something, his phone, tap authorized or not, would lead them right to it. Thus I think that wiretaps are far more prevalent than we can know because it is too easy to use them in a "transparent way". This is one reason why, I believe, that we can't be told the importance of this, as Dr. Denning states. That would reveal it's usage as well as its effectiveness. A lot of people would not like the numbers. One reason for the Clipper is to give the public an alernative it could live with which would not allow what is perceived as excess if run properly but still be available to protect them in warented cases.

Second, you seem to believe that anything that will "block crime" must therefore be a "good thing" and should therefore be adopted. This is not true, even if it is not subject to government abuse. For example, a system that could turn any telephone (even when on-hook) into an authorized listening microphone might help law enforcement, but would be unacceptable to almost all Americans.

This analogy has power because the whole question now really becomes what level of intrusion is acceptable. Only a judgement call here based on personal politics is possible, I am afraid.

As another example, tatooing a person's social security number on his or her buttocks might help law enforcement, but would also be objectionable.

Aw, C'mon, out of the ballpark and right of right field. :-)

Or, you could require all citizens to wear a bracelet that could be remotely queried (electronically, and only when authorized) to return the location of that citizen.

This, as above, is a level of intrusion decision.

There are all kinds of wonderfully stupid things one could do with modern technology that could "help" law enforcement. But merely being of assistance to law enforcement doesn't make a proposal a good thing; many such ideas are objectionable and unacceptable because of the unreasonably large cost/benefit ratio (real or psychological cost).

Hmmm, this one has me paused. Back again. Ok, what is the cost benefit ratio? I want to be pragmatic about this and hopefully not ideological but it will probably sound simply paranoid. The benefit is that we citizens of the world now gain the abiblity to be in the same room together, for any intent or purpose, wherever we might be in the world. The cost of this ability remains to be seen but Dr. Denning believes it to be very high. It is certainly revolutionary in every sense of the word. :-) The benefit to business is obvious, yawn, and to illicit lovers, hmmm, but to the average person, personal security could be used as an argument for giving up personal privacy so long as it was sufficiently hard to invade that privacy (which it obviously isn't now.)

The clipper proposal, in my opinion, is of exactly this nature.

Perhaps, but for another reason. It is now just too plain easy to make an alternative box with real security which is capable of Clipper piggyback that it makes any sense to have Clipper at all unless the other shoe drops which all babblings so far say won't. Unless other forms are outlawed, Clipper has a decidedly short lifetime. If other forms are outlawed, only outlaws will have them, and have them they will. If the Blue Boxes of the '60s and '70's could be blue marketed for fair sums, imagine the black market in easy to use Black Boxes.

Third, you seem unnecessarily polly-annish about our government and the potential for abuse. The clipper proposal places all trust for its management within the executive branch; a corrupt president could direct that it be used for inappropriate purposes.

Agreed. A better escrow method involving at least two of the branches would be preferable. Pretty hard to involve congress so that leaves the judiciary and the executive. Something could be made to work here I think.

The unspecified nature of many of the associated procedures leaves much room to speculate that there are "holes" that could be exploited by government officials to abuse the rights of American citizens. Even if the proposal were modified to split the trust among the various branches of government, one might still reasonably worry about possible abuse.

Yes, but it sure helps. If the judiciary holds one half and only will combine it with the other if *it* makes the decision to allow the tap then we would seem to have a system that works the way that many want. Abuse is possible of any system that man creates and this one is not immune by any means but it could be made very difficult.

Merely because you've met the current set of representatives of various agencies, and feel you can trust them, doesn't mean that such trust can be warranted in their successors. One should build in institutional checks and balances that overcome occasional moral lapses in one or more office holders.

My hope would be that the judiciary act as the throtle or governer of government that it was designed to be. Granted one can argue at length as to how well it has remained detached and fulfilled that role but it is still the best alternative.

Fourth, your discussion of "searching your home and seizing your papers" is misleading. You seem to imply that because law enforcement can be issued a warrant to search your home, that we should adopt clipper. Yet this analogy only makes sense if individuals were required to deposit copies of their front door keys with the government. I can build any kind of house I wish (out of steel, for example), and put any kind of locks on it, and wire up any kind of intrusion detectors on it, etc. The government, armed with a search warrant, is not guaranteed an "easy entry" into my home at all. The appropriate analogical conclusion is that individuals should be able to use any kind of encryption they want, and the government should be allowed (when authorized, of course) to try and break their encryption.

I have absolutely no argument with this in theory. Ron, it is a very good defense but for the difference in media. To ignore the difference between the medium of a door and the medium of a communications channel is naive. If you merely consider them as two forms of communication your analogy breaks immediately.

Finally, you argue (elsewhere, not in this editorial) that the decision rests in part on "classified" information. Such an argument only makes sense if there is a specific law-enforcement situation that makes such classified information timely and relevant. (E.g., if there was a current investigation as to whether the Department of the Treasury had been infiltrated by organized crime.) The use of "classified information" is otherwise generally inappropriate in discussing communications policy that will last over decades.

I totally disagree. To me it is self obvious that if there were problems that just our knowing would make worse it would be a good idea that we not know about them. National security with the vast dollars spent on the problem understands. I think this resistance from Dr. Denning is a function of her gnowing. I know how unpopular it has become to consider the U.S. government as anything but idiots but I am not so sure about that. You here admit to being of the "punk" thinking. What if this is an issue that is beyond the ability of a punk to really know anything about at all?

This hardly covers all of the relevant issues, but it covers the points that came immediately to mind in reading your editorial...

I look forward to more. Please include cypherpunks on your Cc: list. Yeah, you are are guaranteed a volume of bullshit but there are some smart people there too.

P.S. Feel free to pass along, quote, or otherwise re-distribute this...

You didn't mention respond. I hope that is ok. :-) Peace, Bob -- Bob Cain rcain@netcom.com 408-354-8021 "I used to be different. But now I'm the same." --------------PGP 1.0 or 2.0 public key available on request.------------------