Those of you who still believe that the U.S.A is
"The land of the free" may wish to read the following excerpt
from "The RISKS forum" on UseNet. The complete message can be
found in ee$userdisk:[Albaugh]Senate.txt. For those of you who
would be interested in such details. W. H. Murray has posted
other stuff on UseNet, which has tended to be fairly well
reasoned. I don't know anything else about him, but note that
he posted from DOCKMASTER.NCSC.MIL, which is the "visible"
network node run by the National Security Agency. If even
the spooks think this is going too far...
Mike
Path: dms!motcsd!apple!decwrl!ucbvax!CSL.SRI.COM!risks
From: [email protected]
Newsgroups: comp.risks
Subject: U.S. Senate S. 266
Message-ID:
Date: Wed, 10 Apr 91 17:23 EDT
Sender: [email protected]
Reply-To: [email protected]
Organization: The Internet
Approved: [email protected]
Lines: 12
Senate 266 introduced by Mr. Biden (for himself and Mr. DeConcini)
contains the following section:
SEC. 2201. COOPERATION OF TELECOMMUNICATIONS PROVIDERS WITH LAW ENFORCEMENT
It is the sense of Congress that providers of electronic communications
services and manufacturers of electronic communications service equipment shall
ensure that communications systems permit the government to obtain the plain
text contents of voice, data, and other communications when appropriately
authorized by law.
[ Selected excerpts from the followup post by the same author:]
The referenced language requires that manufacturers build trap-doors
into all cryptographic equipment and that providers of cconfidential
channels reserve to themselves, their agents, and assigns the ability to
read all traffic.
[Does anybody] believe that it is possible for
manufacturers of crypto gear to include such a mechanism and also to reserve
its use to those "appropriately authorized by law" to employ it?
[Does anybody] believe that providers of electronic
communications services can reserve to themselves the ability to read all the
traffic and still keep the traffic "confidential" in any meaningful sense?
[Would _YOU_] buy crypto gear or confidential services from vendors who were
subject to such a law?
[...] An earlier Senate went to great pains to assure itself that there were
no trapdoors in the DES. Mr. Biden and Mr. DeConcini want to mandate them.
[...]
Any assertion that all use of any such trap-doors would be only
"when appropriately authorized by law" is absurd on its face. It is not
humanly possible to construct a mechanism that could meet that
requirement; any such mechanism would be subject to abuse.
[...]
William Hugh Murray, Executive Consultant, Information System Security 21
Locust Avenue, Suite 2D, New Canaan, Connecticut 06840 203 966 4769