In Tuesday June 8 Final edition of the Washington Post, Page A12 US Data Decoding Plan Delayed Business and Legal Objections Reviewed by John Schwartz The Federal initiative to establish a new standard for scrambling electronic communications will be slowed until its ramifications can be more fully studied, the official in charge of implementing the program said yesterday. The government's proposed "Clipper Chip" plan, announced on April 16, would create a new national standard for data encryption that would make possible the deccoding and wiretaps by law enforcement and national security agencies. The plan has met with criticism from high-technology industries that argue that the new requirements ould be expensive and hurt the competiveness of their products. Civil liberties advocates see it as a threat to privacy. Raymond Kammer, acting director of the National Institite of Standards and Technology (NIST) - which developed the Clipper proposal with the National Security Agency and is charged with implementing it within the government- delivered the news to a Washington conference attended largly by critics of the Clipper plan. In an interview afterward, Kammer said that the entiore Clipper plan was still being discussed, and if the review revialed unresolvable problems, "maybe we won't continue in the direction we started out." Criticism was sharp at the cryptography and privacy conference sponsored by the Washington office of the Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility, a public interest group concerned with high-tech issues. One panelist compared Kammer's appearance at the conference to "having a target painted on your chest." Kammer said: "We're not going to close off the process while there's still productive conversation. And its' obvious from the meeting today that ther's still plenty of productive conversation." Pressure has been building on NIST since the WShite House announcement in April. Critics of the plan have flooded the administration with lengthly lists of questions about the new plan, voicing concerns that the proposal might make American products more expensicve, less secure, and less competitive overseas while not hindering criminals. Last Friday, NIST's advirosy panel on privacy issues concluded two days of heated hearings concerning the Clipper proposal with a resolution expressing "serious concerns" sparked by the administrations's proposal. "Things are going too fast." said William Ware, chairman of the Computer System Security and Privacy Advisory Board, a body created under the Computer Security Act of 1987. The NIST panel reported that the government had not conviningly explained the nature of law enforcement problems that would be solved by the Clipper plan, and cited damage the proposal was likely to do to the American software industry. Later that day, White House officials overseeing the Clipper plan met with representatives of industry and civil liberties groups, including the high-tech policy group Electronic Frontier Foundation as well as the American Civil Liberties Union. Administration officials said that the Clipper review would be extended into the fall and that the government would not move beyond its initial plans to buy about 10,000 Clipper-equiped telephones until the review was completed. John Podesta, assistance to the President, said that meeting was part of a continuing dialog with the private sector. "It's time to start ot get answers insteead of the endless quest for questions, Podesta said." ================== Any typos were added in transcription. 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>