Cops, Spies Fail to Slow Crypto Bill

Security and Freedom through Encryption Act passed at a mark-up
meeting of the House International Relations Committee.

	http://www.wired.com/news/news/politics/story/5399.html

Excellent quote contained in the link below...
"We don't give a damn about export policy," FBI
Assistant director James Callstrom said. "We 
care about protecting people domestically, and 
we can't do that without wiretapping capabilities."

Translation: 
"We know we can't stop crypto overseas, we don't 
believe the american people have =any= right to privacy."

amp
------------------------
  From: Dave K-P <dkp@iname.com>
  Subject: Cops, Spies Fail to Slow Crypto Bill 
  Date: Tue, 22 Jul 1997 23:17:25 -0400 
  To: cypherpunks@toad.com


> Security and Freedom through Encryption Act passed at a mark-up
> meeting of the House International Relations Committee.
> 
> 	http://www.wired.com/news/news/politics/story/5399.html
> 

---------------End of Original Message-----------------

------------------------
Name: amp
E-mail: amp@pobox.com
Date: 07/23/97
Time: 11:17:28
Visit me at http://www.pobox.com/~amp

'Drug Trafficking Offense' is the root passphrase to the Constitution.

Have you seen 
http://www.public-action.com/SkyWriter/WacoMuseum
------------------------

At 10:00 AM -0700 7/23/97, Tim May wrote:
>And when people repeatedly point out that common criminals, terrorists, and
>the like are unlikely in the extreme to escrow their keys with the
>government...the government shills and officials are silent.

I can't resist.  "When crypto is outlawed, only outlaws will have crypto."
However, in the case of crypto, essentially all terrorists, child
pornographers, big-time drug dealers, and big-time money launderers will
have and use it.

To try to redeem myself for yielding to temptation let me offer the
following scenario:

It is sometime in the year 2002.  The GAK crowd has achieved its wildest
wet dream, and all development of non-GAKed crypto stopped in 1998.  All
the standard computer software uses GAKed crypto.

Let us further assume that US Airframes Inc. (USAI) is in heavy competition
with French Wings Inc. to build the next generation of passenger airplanes.
The competition is so heavy that the respective governments are doing all
they can to provide under-the-table help to their national champions.  This
certainly includes playing the GAK card and decrypting every communication
they can get their hands on.

Now assume you are the security manager of USAI.  Your job is to ensure the
confidentiality of communications between your branch offices and
headquarters in the US.  You get (perhaps from someone who enjoys child
pornography) a copy of PGP which was saved on some forgotten CDROM backup
dating from 1997.  You share your copy with headquarters and the branch
offices, generate key pairs, and validate their MD5 hashes through some
offline protocol.  Now all really sensitive traffic is encrypted with PGP
and then sent through the standard GAK crypto.

Now consider the problem of the French Government.  The only way they can
know you are using illegal crypto is to decrypt the GAKed outer layer.  If
they arrest you for using illegal crypto, they have blown their covert
monitoring.  The US government will make a big international incident about
this misuse of GAK and impose a special tariff on French wine.  If the
French keep quiet, you can continue to use PGP.

This is the classic dilemma of covert decryption.  Kahn describes is well
in "The Code Breakers".  It also applies to the four horsemen.  If the
government arrests someone for illegal crypto, the whole organization knows
that part of the operation has attracted government attention, and can
change their communications and/or have those people take a vacation to
cool off.


-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bill Frantz       | The Internet was designed  | Periwinkle -- Consulting
(408)356-8506     | to protect the free world  | 16345 Englewood Ave.
frantz@netcom.com | from hostile governments.  | Los Gatos, CA 95032, USA

At 9:17 AM -0700 7/23/97, amp@pobox.com wrote:
>Excellent quote contained in the link below...
>"We don't give a damn about export policy," FBI
>Assistant director James Callstrom said. "We
>care about protecting people domestically, and
>we can't do that without wiretapping capabilities."
>
>Translation:
>"We know we can't stop crypto overseas, we don't
>believe the american people have =any= right to privacy."

This of course has been obvious for the past 4 to 5 years of the
Clipper/GAK debate.

Even when they are pushing for export controls, they really want "Key
Recovery" mandated. And they talk about catching terrorists and child
pornographers...catching them _in the U.S._, that is.

How export controls help catch domestic criminals, Mafia dons, etc. is
unclear to all of us.

And when people repeatedly point out that common criminals, terrorists, and
the like are unlikely in the extreme to escrow their keys with the
government...the government shills and officials are silent.

--Tim May

There's something wrong when I'm a felon under an increasing number of laws.
Only one response to the key grabbers is warranted: "Death to Tyrants!"
---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
tcmay@got.net  408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA  | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
Higher Power: 2^1398269     | black markets, collapse of governments.
"National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

At 11:17 PM 7/22/97 -0400, Dave K-P wrote:
>Security and Freedom through Encryption Act passed at a mark-up
>meeting of the House International Relations Committee.
>
>	http://www.wired.com/news/news/politics/story/5399.html

Unless the bill has substantially changed, the Feds are giving up
some control over encryption exports, which they'd substantially
lost in the market anyway, and some ability to mandate GAK,
which they haven't been able to sell very well in their last 4 tries,
in return for criminalizing domestic use of crypto by people who want
to preserve their privacy while committing potentially incorrect acts.

Sounds like they're maintaining the image that _they're_ the ones
compromising, the poor guys, when in reality they're gaining power.

Not only does "Use crypto, go to jail" penalize spies with secret decoder
rings (arguably a National Security issue), and child pornographers
sending their encrypted wares to each other (arguably a police issue),
it penalizes anyone who uses a digital cellphone to call their bookie
or ask their under-21 roommate if they should pick up beer on the way home
or ask somebody for a date if they're not the politically approved gender,
or who uses IPv6 IPSEC to carry their email to their ISP on anything illegal,
whether it's something that rates 5 years in jail or a $25 fine. 
If the CDA hadn't been tossed out on its <expletive deleted> you could
have gotten the extra 5 years for saying <expletive deleted> on an
encrypted mailing list if it was possible there wasa kid listening -
or for using an encrypted file system on the PC where you store your Out Box
even if you're sending to unencrypted mailing lists.

One version of the bill _did_ get changed to only penalize crypto
used with Federal felony crimes, which reduces the damage substantially
(though Tim _keeps_ being a felon under an increasing number of rules);
does anybody know if this provision survived?


#			Thanks;  Bill
# Bill Stewart, +1-415-442-2215 stewarts@ix.netcom.com
# You can get PGP outside the US at ftp.ox.ac.uk/pub/crypto/pgp
#   (If this is a mailing list or news, please Cc: me on replies.  Thanks.)

At 12:01 -0700 7/23/97, Bill Stewart wrote:
>One version of the bill _did_ get changed to only penalize crypto
>used with Federal felony crimes, which reduces the damage substantially
>(though Tim _keeps_ being a felon under an increasing number of rules);
>does anybody know if this provision survived?

The current version of SAFE, approved by IR, includes the narrower
"crypto-in-a-crime" provision.

-Declan



-------------------------
Declan McCullagh
Time Inc.
The Netly News Network
Washington Correspondent
http://netlynews.com/