From jwarren@well.sf.ca.us Wed Feb 16 19:07:13 1994 Subject: GovAccess#15: "Gov access"? YUCK! auto-peep + fed-snoop + net-censor Feb.16, 1994 This is *not* what I originally had in mind when I used the phrase, "government access," but it certainly fits -- and the net-based political action it is prompting fits even more. So hyar 't'is. --jim "Relying on the government to protect your privacy is like asking a peeping tom to install your window blinds." -- John Perry Barlow, EFF co-founder %%%%%%%%%%%%%%% BIG BROTHER ON A CHIP From crawford@cs.ucdavis.edu Thu Feb 3 04:41:56 1994 From: crawford@cs.ucdavis.edu (Rick Crawford) [ from E-d-u-p-a-g-e 02-01-94 ] HIGH-TECH SNOOP GADGET. A super-secret branch of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service has awarded three contracts to a Montreal firm to make equipment that can quickly isolate key words and phrases from millions of airborne phone, fax, radio signals and other transmissions. The hardware has the "Orwellian potential to sweep through ... and keep records of all conversations," said one CSIS critic. (CTV National News, 01/31/94 11:00 pm). %%%%%%%%%%%%%%% "A little rebellion is a good thing now and then." -- Thomas Jefferson [from John Dilley ] %%%%%%%%%%%%%%% U.S. ADMINISTRATION'S GUARANTEED-INSECURITY PROJECT PROMPTS NET ACTION Over the strenuous opposition of most network users, most of the nation's high-tech companies and virtually all of the nation's financial and global- trading businesses, the Clinton/Gore administration is moving forward on a proposal to make scrambling systems that have a "backdoor" for government eves-droppers, standard in U.S. voice and data communications systems. FYI, various parts of the system are called Skipjack, Clipper and Capstone. The fundamental issue: Will government continue to have increasingly-easy, tap-from-anywhere evesdropping - in a form that would have made J. Edgar Hoover envious as he recorded political opponents including a sitting President, Martin Luther King, and so on.? Or will everyone have the secure voice and data communications at low cost via the technology now available around the world, detailed in the open technical literature -- even if they are political opponents or alleged wrong-doers? The following details just one of the personal-privacy political-action defense-efforts that are *exploding* across the network. Use it or loose it. --jim "... TO PETITION THE GOVERNMENT FOR REDRESS OF GRIEVANCES." -- Amendment I Mon Feb 7 04:41:13 PST 1994 [text was reformatted for GovAccess --jim] Organization: CPSR Washington Office From: Dave Banisar To: CPSR Civil Liberties Group Electronic Petition to Oppose Clipper Please Distribute Widely On January 24, many of the nation's leading experts in cryptography and computer security wrote President Clinton and asked him to withdraw the Clipper proposal. The public response to the letter has been extremely favorable, including coverage in the New York Times and numerous computer and security trade magazines. Many people have expressed interest in adding their names to the letter. In response to these requests, CPSR is organizing an Internet petition drive to oppose the Clipper proposal. We will deliver the signed petition to the White House, complete with the names of all the people who oppose Clipper. To sign on to the letter, send a message to: Clipper.petition@cpsr.org with the message "I oppose Clipper" (no quotes) You will receive a return message confirming your vote. Please distribute this announcement so that others may also express their opposition to the Clipper proposal. CPSR is a membership-based public interest organization. For membership information, please email cpsr@cpsr.org . For more information about Clipper, please consult the CPSR Internet Library - FTP/WAIS/Gopher CPSR.ORG /cpsr/privacy/crypto/clipper --- The President The White House Washington, DC 20500 Dear Mr. President: We are writing to you regarding the "Clipper" escrowed encryption proposal now under consideration by the White House. We wish to express our concern about this plan and similar technical standards that may be proposed for the nation's communications infrastructure. The current proposal was developed in secret by federal agencies primarily concerned about electronic surveillance, not privacy protection. Critical aspects of the plan remain classified and thus beyond public review. The private sector and the public have expressed nearly unanimous opposition to Clipper. In the formal request for comments conducted by the Department of Commerce last year, less than a handful of respondents supported the plan. Several hundred opposed it. If the plan goes forward, commercial firms that hope to develop new products will face extensive government obstacles. Cryptographers who wish to develop new privacy enhancing technologies will be discouraged. Citizens who anticipate that the progress of technology will enhance personal privacy will find their expectations unfulfilled. Some have proposed that Clipper be adopted on a voluntary basis and suggest that other technical approaches will remain viable. The government, however, exerts enormous influence in the marketplace, and the likelihood that competing standards would survive is small. Few in the user community believe that the proposal would be truly voluntary. The Clipper proposal should not be adopted. We believe that if this proposal and the associated standards go forward, even on a voluntary basis, privacy protection will be diminished, innovation will be slowed, government accountability will be lessened, and the openness necessary to ensure the successful development of the nation's communications infrastructure will be threatened. We respectfully ask the White House to withdraw the Clipper proposal. [I understand this petition has already garnered thousands of co-signers. Many more are needed if these grievances are to be redressed. --jim] %%%%%%%%%%%%%%% EFF IS ANOTHER MAJOR GROUP OPPOSING GOVT-GUARANTEED COMMUNICATIONS-INSECURITY The Electronic Frontier Foundation is also working to protect our privacy. To help stop Clipper and eliminate export controls on cryptography, support a bill introduced in the House of Representatives, HR 3627. To support the bill, send email to . For details of EFF membership, send mail to membership@eff.org . %%%%%%%%%%%%%%% CANADIAN ELECTRONIC FRONTIER GROUP CONCERNED ABOUT NET CENSORSHIP From farber@eff.org Sun Feb 6 16:41:15 1994 To: interesting-people@eff.org (interesting-people mailing list) For immediate release --- February 4, 1994 Electronic Frontier Canada (EFC) is concerned about the recent censorship of five Usenet newsgroups at the University of Waterloo. Usenet News is a distributed electronic bulletin board system available to an estimated 15 million Internet users across Canada and around the world. Users can browse articles on any of the several thousand available topics that may interest them. The choice of what to read is left to the reader. Users may also contribute their own articles and follow up on the articles of authors. EFC believes the open exchange of ideas and opinions on Usenet has become an important part of a university education. EFC was founded in January 1994 "to ensure that the principles embodied in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms are protected as new computing, communications, and information technologies emerge". EFC is concerned that, although in Canada the right to free speech is not an absolute right, the censorship recently imposed at the University of Waterloo sets a dangerous precedent and has resulted in the banning of some forms of expression that are protected. "No Canadian court has ever decided that any message on any Usenet newsgroup is illegal," the organization's co-founder, Professor Jeffrey Shallit, said today. "By this ban, the University is exercising `prior restraint' on the rights of University of Waterloo faculty, students, and staff to read and contribute freely to the discussions on the banned newsgroups." Prof. Shallit noted there was a "conspicuous absence of computer scientists and librarians" on the committee that decides what people can read on computers. He also said that the order did not take into account the University's historical role as the guardian of free intellectual inquiry. Prof. Shallit noted that the University of Waterloo has been down the path of censorship before. Acting upon a complaint about a single joke posted to the newsgroup in "rec.humor.funny", the entire newsgroup was banned by the university administration in 1988. Later, a dozen newsgroups devoted to discussions about sex were banned. The ban was reversed in May 1991 after a public outcry. In a Usenet news article, Professor David Jones of McGill University, the other co-founder of EFC, commented that the UW Ethics Committee seemed to "focus on the medium rather than the message". He asked if the sort of information now banned in electronic form would soon be removed from the UW libraries. Prof. Jones observed that the University of Waterloo Library carries information that, at first blush, might seem controversial, including _Playboy_ magazine (available on microfilm), and a book denying the Holocaust, _The Hoax of the Twentieth Century_. "If the University of Waterloo administration chooses to place limits on what its students and faculty are allowed to read, these limits should be consistently applied across various media," Jones said. Dr. Jeffrey Shallit, University of Waterloo, Dept of Computer Science Telephone: (908)932-0585 Fax: (908)932-5932 E-mail: shallit@graceland.uwaterloo.ca Dr. David Jones, McGill University, Dept of Electrical Engineering Telephone: (514)398-8348 or -6319 Fax:(514)398-7348 or -4470 E-mail: djones@cim.mcgill.ca Electronic Frontier Canada can be reached electronically by sending e-mail to: efc@graceland.uwaterloo.ca Reference documents collected by EFC are accessible using the Internet gopher file-search tool: gopher -p "1/community/efc" ee470.ee.mcgill.ca %%%%%%%%%%%%%%% Mo' as it Is. --jim Jim Warren, columnist for MicroTimes, Government Technology, BoardWatch, etc. 345 Swett Rd., Woodside CA 94062; voice/415-851-7075; fax/415-851-2814 >> To join the GovAccess list, email a request to jwarren@well.sf.ca.us .<< >> Permission herewith granted for unlimited reposting and recirculation.<<