Cypherpunk friends, Here's a long article I just posted to talk.politics.crypto and two other groups (with 6500 newsgroups days, you've got to post to more than one group just to ensure reasonable coverage of your target audience). I make a few points I've been itching to make for a while. --Tim Newsgroups: talk.politics.crypto,comp.org.eff.talk,alt.privacy.clipper Path: netcom.com!tcmay From: tcmay@netcom.com (Timothy C. May) Subject: If Crippler is a Done Deal, What Next? Message-ID: <tcmayCo7s6E.HBI@netcom.com> Organization: NETCOM On-line Communication Services (408 241-9760 guest) Date: Wed, 13 Apr 1994 20:13:26 GMT Lines: 184 Many of us believe the Crippler/Clipper/Skipjack/Tessera/Capstone/etc. "Escrowed Encryption" system is basically a "done deal," to use David Sternlight's words in alt.privacy.clipper. (Sorry for using so many different names for the "Clipper" program. It was announced as Clipper, last April 16th, and it took most of us only a few minutes to realize what the government folks had apparently not realized in _years_ of work (or at least _months_ with the "Clipper" name), namely, that Clipper is the well-known name of the Fairchild/Intergraph Clipper chip (Fairchild developed this 32-bit chip, then sold the line to Intergraph when National acquired Fairchild) and also is the name of a well-known database compiler. Jeeshh! Anyway, the other names associated with the project: Skipjack, Capstone, Tessera, and probably some I've forgotten here. We who scoff at it also call it: Cripple, Crippler, Flapjack, Clipjack, etc. And with no disrespect to my former employer Intel, with whom I spent 12 invigorating and profitable years, I came up with the "Big Brother Inside" slogan....someone else got the decals printed and I am certainly *not* advocating that cypherhooligans afix these stickers on Clipper phones and Capstone-compliant computers!) Clipper will happen, _is_ happening this very moment. I've believed this for the past year, though this has not lessened by distaste for it in any way. I just see the inertia of the bureaucracy and the ass-covering that is natural to places like Washington (having lived in Langley, Virginia). It was clear when Clipper was announced as an _Executive_ action (reminds me of a movie I saw...) that few if any changes would be made in the proposed system. A few minor alteration of the escrow agent selection, perhaps, but nothing central to the idea that one's private keys are to be held "in escrow" (as Eric Hughes has noted, a gross abuse of the term "escrow"). Clipper is like a requirement that house keys be "escrowed" with the local police, or that all photos processed at the local drugstore be double-printed, with copies sent to the local "Photo Escrow Center." After all, how else can we catch child pornographers and other "bad guys"? And what about those curtains that "encrypt" the visible contents of houses under surveillance? Surely drawing the curtains when one is under police surveillance is equivalent to encrypting one's traffic when the authorities are lawfully surveilling one's computers? Perhaps we need "approved curtains." And what about the many crimes people confess in their diaries? Plans to kill themselves, plans to hide their money from the tax collectors, even plans to develop things like PGP! Surely many crimes could be stopped if diaries, journals, and personal letters could be "escrowed"--with suitable safeguards, of course, to ensure that only legitimate inspections were done (for example, J. Edgar Hoover's need to inspect diaries to find salacious sexual material). Some may call me "shrill" for citing the above points. I don't think so. We are at a kind of cusp in history, where privacy can either be secured through strong crypto--despite the crimes that may go undetected or unpunished because of this--or privacy can be handed over to others to protect or not protect as they see fit. Consider the current signs: - that contractors like Mykotronx, VLSI Technology, Inc., National, and MIPS were already well along in building the chips. (There have been delays reported, and the SecurePhone 3600 is not available in places I've looked, and the MYK78A is reportedly a pig in various ways...) - that the NSA and NIST had too much at stake to back down because a bunch of the rabble (EFF, CPSR, Cypherpunks, 700 Club watchers, Rush Limbaugh fans, and similar pond scum) objected to it. Being an executive action, legislative approval is not needed (I'm not completely convinced there's no way for Congress to block it, as there must be enabling legislations that impinges on the Crippler project). - "suitable incentivization" is being used to induce manufacturers to adopt Crippler. Subsidies are given. Export controls (ITAR-related) are relaxed for Crippler systems, tightened for "noncomplying" crypto systems. Foreign governments have _apparently_ been approached (we on the Cypherpunks list have collected many inputs from non-U.S. sources pointing to this) to deploy their own versions of EES, possibly with variations, and presumably with their own family keys. A true conspiracy buff might call this the Crypto World Order. - reports that cable box makers are signing up to put Clipper technology in every set top (though RSA has a competing, non-escrowed system, which I seem to recall some cable box users were planning to use....could be we'll be seeing the "battle of the crypto systems" coming to a cable system soon! I know which of the two alternatives I'll lobby for: the RSA system (even if I have minor differences of opinion about the advisability of software patents in general and public key patents in particular). Lots of action underway. Turbulent waters can run deep, too. So, if deployment of Crippler is coming, regardless of our protestations and clamorings, what next? I've always felt the big danger was the *outlawing of non-escrowed encryption*. My article, "A Trial Balloon to Ban Encryption," October 1992, sci.crypt and elsewhere, correctly spotted the move toward some form of key escrow. The 1000 responses and messages in related threads indicated that nearly everyone else saw the same thing, too, once the Denning paper on key escrow was pointed out to them. As difficult as outlawing alternatives to escrowed encryption may be (so many avenues for skirting Clipper---too many to go into here), and with the likely public reaction against it (the Time-CNN poll), I strongly suspect this is the intended goal. Without some degree of exclusivity, will Clipper be used by the very folks the advocates want to catch--the drug dealers, the terrorists, the child pornographers, the tax cheats, and the other "bad guys"? Of course not. To be sure, some fraction of them will use Clipper--after all, Pablo Escobar was caught after using a plain old cellular telephone. But in the time frame envisaged, several years from now, wider use of encryption is expected. Absent a ban on non-Clipper technology (or an _attempted_ ban, to be more precise), many will be using cellphones with VoicePGP or similar approaches (I know of half a dozen groups busily developing cheap voice encryption products--and of course some systems are already available). Pity the stupid terrorist who buys an expensive Clipper phone and then uses it to discuss his plans! How might a ban on non-escrowed encryption happen and then be enforced? Whit Diffie has suggested what I think is the most likely--and most chilling--scenario for the outlawing of non-escrowed encryption: use the civil forfeiture laws to to implement a "Zero Tolerance" system for unauthorized, outlawed crypto. Analogous to the "War on Drugs," where corporations are enlisted in the War by threatening them with loss of their assests, or with shut down of their operations, if drugs are found on their premises or if they fail to maintain a "Drug-Free Workplace." The casual user of outlawed crypto may not be caught, but the widespread use of alternatives to key escrow crypto will be thwarted. Corporations will audit personal computers for signs of PGP, RSA, and other "contraband," networks will be Clipjacked for all inter-site (and perhaps intra-site LANs) networks, and the threat of civil forfeiture will be used to terrorize corporations and small businesses into compliance. Needless to say, I am opposed to this in nearly every way imaginable. I don't necessarily impute evil motives to those who advocate today's Clipper and tomorrow's likely mandatory key escrow. I just consider it a dangerous and even unconstitutional step...something like requiring permits for writing articles and for speaking in non-English languages. (By the way, the comparison of crypto to speech is a natural, and accurate, one. If I speak to my friend Alice in a language that wiretappers and eavesdroppers cannot understand, am I "illegally encrypting"? What difference does it make whether this undecipherable speech is Latvian, Elihiuish, or a computer-based translation?) For the past 18 months, since the Digital Telephony Bill and the initial appearance of the key escrow idea, I have targeted my efforts not at short-term things like Clipper, but instead at doing things to make sure that our ability to communicate freely with whomever and in whatever form we choose is not restricted. My favored approach is technological, not political. The real battle is coming, I suspect. --Tim May If you've read this far, thanks! If this outlook interests you, consider joining the Cypherpunks mailing list (the name was jokingly suggested by an editor at "Mondo 2000," as a pun on cipher/cypher and "cyberpunks"). Send a "help" message in the body to "majordomo@toad.com" for instructions. Or, you can bypass the instructions--if you dare--with just a "subscribe cypherpunks" message (in the body) to majordomo@toad.com. Don't join merely to disrupt our mailing list, and be prepared for 30-50 mail messages a day, sometimes more. -- .......................................................................... Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay@netcom.com | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero 408-688-5409 | knowledge, reputations, information markets, W.A.S.T.E.: Aptos, CA | black markets, collapse of governments. Higher Power: 2^859433 | Public Key: PGP and MailSafe available. "National borders are just speed bumps on the information superhighway."