Time Magazine, March 14, 1994


TECHNOLOGY 

WHO SHOULD KEEP THE KEYS?

The U.S. government wants the power to tap into every phone, fax and
computer transmission

BY PHILIP ELMER-DEWITT

... (general background)

... (general info on techo advances)


  Thus the stage was set for one of the most bizarre technology-policy
battles ever waged: the Clipper Chip war. Lined up on one side are the
three- letter cloak-and-dagger agencies -- the NSA, the CIA and the
FBI -- and key policymakers in the Clinton Administration (who are
taking a surprisingly hard line on the encryption issue). Opposing
them is an equally unlikely coalition of computer firms, civil
libertarians, conservative columnists and a strange breed of
cryptoanarchists who call themselves the cypherpunks.

  At the center is the Clipper Chip, a semiconductor device that the
NSA developed and wants installed in every telephone, computer modem
and fax machine. The chip combines a powerful encryption algorithm
with a ''back door'' -- the cryptographic equivalent of the master key
that opens schoolchildren's padlocks when they forget their
combinations. A ''secure'' phone equipped with the chip could, with
proper authorization, be cracked by the government. Law-enforcement
agencies say they need this capability to keep tabs on drug runners,
terrorists and spies. Critics denounce the Clipper -- and a bill
before Congress that would require phone companies to make it easy to
tap the new digital phones -- as Big Brotherly tools that will strip
citizens of whatever privacy they still have in the computer age.


  In a Time/CNN poll of 1,000 Americans conducted last week by
Yankelovich Partners, two-thirds said it was more important to protect
the privacy of phone calls than to preserve the ability of police to
conduct wiretaps.  When informed about the Clipper Chip, 80% said they
opposed it.



  The battle lines were first drawn last April, when the
Administration unveiled the Clipper plan and invited public comment.
For nine months opponents railed against the scheme's many flaws:
criminals wouldn't use phones equipped with the government's chip;
foreign customers wouldn't buy communications gear for which the U.S.
held the keys; the system for giving investigators access to the
back-door master codes was open to abuse; there was no guarantee that
some clever hacker wouldn't steal the keys. But in the end the
Administration ignored the advice. In early February, after computer-
industry leaders had made it clear that they wanted to adopt their own
encryption standard, the Administration announced that it was putting
the NSA plan into effect. Government agencies will phase in use of
Clipper technology for all unclassified communications. Commercial use
of the chip will be voluntary -- for now.

  It was tantamount to a declaration of war, not just to a small group
of crypto-activists but to all citizens who value their privacy, as
well as to telecommunications firms that sell their products abroad.
Foreign customers won't want equipment that U.S. spies can tap into,
particularly since powerful, uncompromised encryption is available
overseas. ''Industry is unanimous on this,'' says Jim Burger, a
lobbyist for Apple Computer, one of two dozen companies and trade
groups opposing the Clipper. A petition circulated on the Internet
electronic network by Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility
gathered 45,000 signatures, and some activists are planning to boycott
companies that use the chips and thus, in effect, hand over their
encryption keys to the government. ''You can have my encryption
algorithm,'' said John Perry Barlow, co-founder of the Electronic
Frontier Foundation, ''when you pry my cold dead fingers from my
private key.''

... (history of Public Key encryption).


... (history of PGP)

  Rather than outlaw PGP and other such programs, a policy that would
probably be unconstitutional, the Administration is taking a marketing
approach. By using its purchasing power to lower the cost of Clipper
technology, and by vigilantly enforcing restrictions against overseas
sales of competing encryption systems, the government is trying to
make it difficult for any alternative schemes to become widespread. If
Clipper manages to establish itself as a market standard -- if, for
example, it is built into almost every telephone, modem and fax
machine sold -- people who buy a nonstandard system might find
themselves with an untappable phone but no one to call.

  That's still a big if. Zimmermann is already working on a version of
PGP for voice communications that could compete directly with Clipper,
and if it finds a market, similar products are sure to follow. ''The
crypto genie is out of the bottle,'' says Steven Levy, who is writing
a book about encryption. If that's true, even the nsa may not have the
power to put it back.

Reported by David S. Jackson/San Francisco and Suneel Ratan/Washington