5 expanded posts ยท every known parent and child
Any special reason why Netscape is working with the NSA to support their Fortezza encryption card? ObConspiracyTheory: Hmmmmm.... Nice government-friendly Jim Clark quote, with the rest of the story http://www-e1c.gnn.com/gnn/wr/96/01/12/features/nsa/index.html -Rishab
>Any special reason why Netscape is working with >the NSA to support their Fortezza encryption card? >ObConspiracyTheory: Hmmmmm.... I think it was a very special reason, $5 million by some accounts. Given the govt. internal needs it is not unreasonable to supply them with the equipment they need. The problem is in the forcing of non governmental personnel to use them. There are an awfully large number of people on cypherpunks who have taken money from the NSA in some form or another. About 5 ft from my office is the old CIA safe from the days they had an office in this building. The US govt does not believe in socialist subsidies to industy. It beleives in corporativist subsidies in inflated military contracts. Boeing got them to build the 747 and now its time for Netscape to get their handout. If this upsets people I'd just like to point out that the farming lobby is even worse, taking those snouts out of the trough is long overdue in almost every industrialised country. Phill
Rishab Aiyer Ghosh wrote: > > Any special reason why Netscape is working with > the NSA to support their Fortezza encryption card? > > ObConspiracyTheory: Hmmmmm.... > > Nice government-friendly Jim Clark quote, with the rest of the story > http://www-e1c.gnn.com/gnn/wr/96/01/12/features/nsa/index.html Here is another quote for you: "Netscape will fight in all forums for totally private encryption." -- Jim Barksdale Netscape CEO One particularly interesting paragraph from the GNN article is: "One senior Federal Government source has reported that NSA has been particularly successful in convincing key members of the US software industry to cooperate with it in producing software that makes Internet messages easier for NSA to intercept, and if they are encrypted, to decode," Madsen wrote. "A knowledgeable government source claims that the NSA has concluded agreements with Microsoft, Lotus and Netscape to permit the introduction of the means to prevent the anonymity of Internet electronic mail, the use of cryptographic key-escrow, as well as software industry acceptance of the NSA-developed Digital Signature Standard (DSS)." I believe that the reference to Netscape in this paragraph is a distortion of our agreement with the NSA. They agreed to buy some of our current products, which they paid for, and to buy products in the future that support Fortezza. Given the large number of organizations within the government that are standardizing on fortezza, our motivation for producing such a product should be obvious. I think in the end the non-NSA purchases of Fortezza based products within the government will be much larger than what the NSA buys. Once we have implemented Fortezza we would like to add support for many alternative crypto cards that are not GAK'd and are more apropriate for commercial or personal use. We will also continue to offer software encryption. Management here has never asked me not to implement anonymity enhancing features. They have not asked me to implement DSS. They have not asked me to implement GAK. Management has let me hold up a release to fix a bug that was causing a user's identity to be accessible from a server. We have awarded several bugs bounty prizes to people who found bugs related to privacy. I understand that in his keynote speach at the RSA Security Conference Jim Barksdale repeated our strong opposition to GAK. Perhaps someone who attended could provide more details. --Jeff -- Jeff Weinstein - Electronic Munitions Specialist Netscape Communication Corporation jsw@netscape.com - http://home.netscape.com/people/jsw Any opinions expressed above are mine.
Let's not get carried away here. Netscape's done a lot for privacy, and every indication we have is that they'll continue to do so. They've introduced strong crypto to the consumer software market for the first time. Giving users control over CAs says a lot about where Netscape is coming from -- it's an obscure thing for which there was no public demand, and which might hurt Netscape's position by opening up the market to competitors. But it destroys the choke point which would have made it possible to impose GAK. Our interests and Netscape's interests coincide. Netscape needs to export strong crypto to be competitive in the global marketplace. As a consequence, Netscape has been making public statements pushing for unrestricted exports of strong crypto. I have no doubt that they're pushing hard for the same thing in private discussions with government officials. Where do people think things like the recent statements from Ron Brown come from? Big companies -- like Netscape -- have ongoing dialogues with the Commerce Department, and apparently they've been pushing for exports. In and of itself that statement wasn't much -- nothing has changed. But it's a sign that the tide is turning. Parts of the government are starting to admit that we're right, and that giving people free access to strong crypto is in everyone's best interest. That's important. But at the same time, it's important for companies like Netscape and Lotus to know that we'll do everything we can to make it painful to back down on these issues. What Lotus is doing is wrong, and we have to do whatever we can to make their decision painful to them. It's absolutely essential that we do whatever we can to make the right decision less painful than the wrong one. We don't have a lot of options in terms of strategy. An immediate, strong, and strident negative reaction may not be the best weapon imaginable, but it's one of the only ones we've got. To those of you who work for these companies, and who are pushing for what's right -- don't take it personally. We have to do it. The Lotus approach is totally unacceptable. A 64 bit key is only a 40 bit key when your opponent already has 24 bits, and a 40 bit key just isn't good enough. But Lotus' plan is much worse than another plan which only provides 40 bits of security. Anything that involves government storehouses of keys is extremely dangerous. Lotus is doing everyone a big disservice when they pretend that this is a step forward. It's gak, and it's not just a proposal anymore -- it's real this time. This is the first wave of guys hitting the beach. Netscape is never going to convince everyone that they're on the right side. Some people will never trust a large company, no matter who works there or what the company does. But by widening the scope of its public efforts on behalf of privacy, Netscape could generate a lot of good will and do a lot of good for its own interests (and its bottom line) as well. It would be good for everyone if Netscape took a more aggressive political stand for free access to strong crypto. How? Expand the crypto coverage on Netscape's web server. Hire a full time person to write about crypto technology and issues. Put a link to the site on the Netscape home page. Netscape's home page links are the most visible on the net -- use them. Get together with companies like Sun and Microsoft to form a lobbying and publicity organization similar to the Tobacco Institute. (I know that's a bad example -- many people think the Tobacco Institute is an evil organization. But it's a good tactic.) I'm personally a little frustrated by the timidity of industry's response. I don't understand it. Netscape's interests are clear, their voice is loud, and their resources are vast. Where's John D. Rockefeller when you need him?
Alex Strasheim wrote: > It would be good for everyone if Netscape took a more aggressive political > stand for free access to strong crypto. How? Expand the crypto coverage > on Netscape's web server. Hire a full time person to write about crypto > technology and issues. Put a link to the site on the Netscape home page. > Netscape's home page links are the most visible on the net -- use them. > Get together with companies like Sun and Microsoft to form a lobbying and > publicity organization similar to the Tobacco Institute. (I know that's a > bad example -- many people think the Tobacco Institute is an evil > organization. But it's a good tactic.) This is the sort of stuff we are starting to do. Expect to see it over the next few months. Jim Barksdale's comments at the RSA conference this week are part of this effort. --Jeff -- Jeff Weinstein - Electronic Munitions Specialist Netscape Communication Corporation jsw@netscape.com - http://home.netscape.com/people/jsw Any opinions expressed above are mine.