Editorial on Crypto Policy -- 6/3/1996 Sacramento Bee

[gcjones at ix.netcom.com]

Thought y'all might find this interesting: 


Editorial in The Sacramento Bee, June 3, 1996
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THE VALUE OF ENCRYPTION

	In a report commissioned by Congress, the National Research Council has
injected some perspective into the noisy and often uncivil debate over
encryption of electronic communications.  Although the Clinton
administration shows no signs of heeding the NRC's advice, Congress will
find the NRC recommendations an excellent guide to national encryption policy.

	For years, the extremes in the debate over the administration's efforts to
restrict the use of encryption have focused on rival bogeys.  Intelligence
and law enforcement have warned of the specter of terrorist or criminal
groups able to use encryption to prevent detection by wiretapping.  In
reply, civil libertarians opposed to Clinton administration efforts to
promote an encryption standard that would leave government agencies with the
key to open up all communications to scrutiny have held up the specter of
"Big Brother."

	By contrast, the NRC panel -- which was chaired by Kenneth Dam, a deputy
secretary of state in the Reagan administration, and included a
distinguished group of former top law enforcement and Pentagon officials --
took a more nuanced approach.  The spread of encryption, the panel agreed,
will make it harder for spies and cops to listen in on enemies and signals.

	But the greater terrorist and criminal threat, it concluded, arises from
electronic networks vulnerable to tampering.  The law enforcement benefit
from the wider use of encryption to keep a terrorist hacker from shutting
down the air traffic control system or an electronic criminal from looting
bank transactions will outweigh the diminished utility of wiretapping.

	Thus, the panel recommends that national policy promote the use of
encryption to protect vital communications systems, such as voice and
cellular telephone systems, from intrusion by criminals.  To give businesses
and individuals confidence in encryption, standards and technology should be
driven by the market and by users, not by the government.  And because
current restrictions on the export of encryption software leave U.S. firms
abroad vulnerable and inhibit the use of the best encryption in U.S.
products, it also recommends relaxation of those controls.

	The burgeoning Internet and expanding wireless communications will be
essential to the economy's growth over the next generation.  But those
technologies can never achieve their full potential if commercial
transactions and personal communications are vulnerable to interception.
The NRC report makes plain that encryption is less of a problem than a
solution.  Its recommendations provide Congress with a guide to policy at a
time that the Clinton administration is paralyzed, its finger in the dike,
protecting against a technological flood that it cannot hope to control.

Copyright, 1996, The Sacramento Bee

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Glenn C. Jones

"If you're walkin' on thin ice, 
you might as well dance."
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