Denning's misleading statements

[Timothy C. May]

At 10:51 PM 1/27/96, Alan Olsen wrote:

>Why is it that whenever I read Denning's pronouncements I feel like I am
>reading something from a villainess in an Ayn Rand novel?
>
>Denning has become the epitome of the pure authoritarian government world
>view.  Analysis of her viewpoints makes me more of an anarchist every time I
>read her rants.  It is that smarmy "We know better than you do" with

One of the interesting things about the whole crypto debate, going back at
least to the Clipper announcement (and actually some months before) has
been that the pro-restrictions, pro-GAK side of the argument has almost no
defenders! Except for David Sternlight, Dorothy Denning, and Donn Parker
("attack of the killer Ds"?), there are almost no public spokesmen for the
pro-restriction, pro-GAK side.

She has written numerous pro-GAK position papers for various conferences,
journals (including the "Proc. of the ACM"), and other fora. Where are the
other defenders? Even the producers of GAKked products are fairly careful
to finesse their positions by saying they are only doing what they are
doing because the government is paying them to, or because the export laws
leave them few other options.

I've never met Dorothy Denning, so I hesitate to characterize her as a
villainess. But certainly she's the only noted cryptographer I know of
who's gone so far out on a limb to defend a position the vast majority of
computer scientists, civil libertarians, and cryptographers scoff at. (And
I don't just mean it is we libertarians and civil libertarians who are
scoffing, I mean that nearly every noted expert who has carefully reviewed
the various schemes to control crypto and to provide GAK has found them to
be essentially unenforceable except via draconian police state methods, and
maybe not even then.)

I personally believe her estrangement from the mainstream position these
last several years and her apparent close association with the
inside-the-Beltway crowd has actually skewed her judgment, that she is no
longer evaluating policies and capabilities based on reasonable objective,
academic analysis.

Her views, and even many of her examples, are very close the views and
examples used by FBI Director Louis Freeh in his testimony to Congress a
few years ago. (I scanned and OCRed this testimony as a favor to Whit
Diffie, so in reviewing the text for OCR corrections, I became very
familiar with Freeh's fear-inducing testimony.)

I don't mean this as a cheap shot against her, but I would not be surprised
to see her take on some sort of "Undersecretary for National Information
Infrastrucure Affairs" or somesuch position in the next Administration (no
matter which side wins the election). She's become a player in the
Washington game.


>Depends on your ability to challenge the status quo.  A vague law with lots
>of harsh but undefined penalties is much more effective than something that
>is rigidly defined.  With rigidly defined laws, you can find loopholes and
>ways to push the envelope.  With vague rules, people will tend to err on the
>side of caution.

Psychologists call this "random reinforcement." A plethora of vague laws
about intent, conspiracy, and threshold have made this the norm. When there
are 25,983 distinct laws on the books, what else is to be expected?

>"Hey, we found this Tim May guy down at the school playground selling crypto
>to the kids!  Let's throw the book at him!"

"This could not have been me, Your Holiness! I would never think to _sell_
cryptography to the kids--I would give them free samples first."

--Tim

Boycott espionage-enabled software!
We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, we know that that ain't allowed.
---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
tcmay at got.net  408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA  | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
Higher Power: 2^756839 - 1  | black markets, collapse of governments.
"National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."