From: grady@netcom.com (1016/2EF221)
Subject: My letter about Clipper
Date: Wed, 28 Apr 1993 21:00:45 GMT
 
The Honorable Dan Hamburg,
representing the 1st District
 
(attn: Paul Anderson, Legislative Aide,
Communications)
 
28 Apr 93
 
Re:  President Clinton's "Clipper Chip" wiretap proposal
 
On April 16, 1993 the Office of the Press Secretary for President 
Clinton announced an initiative to standardize communications 
privacy through encryption using solid-state technology developed 
by the National Security Agency.  This chip ("The Clipper Chip"), 
already proposed for inclusion by AT&T in several 
telecommunications products, has a built-in 'back door' that permits 
law enforcement agencies to monitor the messages undetectably.
 
The administration proponents argue that the "key" to the 
telephone can only be obtained upon warrant from trusted escrow 
houses and that this kind of monitoring capability is necessary to 
prevent criminal conspiracy from flourishing.
 
I disagree strongly with this initiative for several technical and
social reasons.
 
Privacy is indeed desirable and we need technical and social measures
that can assure it.  However, as historical events have shown we 
need protection from the government as least as much as protection 
from other citizens.  Illegal wiretapping of the Weathermen as 
revealed by Federal Judge Damon J. Keith (the 'Keith Case') in 
1971, Richard Nixon's 'watch lists', and the notorious NSA project 
Minaret and project Shamrock involving warrantless monitoring of 
domestic individuals and organizations supports the idea that the 
NSA deems its secretive national security mission more important 
than the law or our individual civil rights.  Nor is the NSA the only 
agency that has disregarded our civil rights in search for 'national 
security'.  For example, in December 1974 Seymour Hersh reported 
in the New York Times the details of Operation Chaos, an illegal 
CIA spying program directed against Americans.  The list is long of 
government wiretap abuses.
 
Technically, the Clipper chip proposal is flawed because the 
specifications for the chip remained classified, contrary to normal 
scientific peer review standards.  We citizens cannot verify the 
correct functioning of this technology nor its capacity for its abuse of 
our right to privacy.  We must trust the NSA to exclusively guard 
our civil rights, which we know is unwise.
 
Wiretapping now and under this new proposal can be done 
undetectably.  There is no technical means to assure us citizens that 
the government has a proper warrant.  The only means we citizens 
have of currently assuring privacy, even from government 
wiretapping, is through strong cryptography.  And this initiative 
explicitly questions our use of this strong cryptography in the 
passage: "We [the administration] are not saying that every 
American, as a matter of right, is entitled to an unbreakable 
commercial encryption product."
 
I disagree.  I believe that we individual do have the right to be 
secure in our papers and effects and our expressions of ideas 
telephonically, digitally, or by any other means.  I believe that the 
government ought to regulate our overt actions in our dealings with 
other people, not to regulate our private expression of ideas to 
ourselves or to others.
 
This initiative even goes further to erode our right to privacy 
because each encoded conversation will be tagged with a unique 
serial number that would allow collection of warrantless collection 
of conversations from the comfort of remote headquarters with just 
the flick of a switch.  This call 'tracking' is a potentially dangerous 
new capability that the government wants in monitoring its citizens.  
Under a recent Federal Court decision (the 'Steve Jackson Games' 
case), the judge ruled that mere collection of digital messages 
without a warrant was not the same as an 'intercept' which is 
forbidden by Federal Law.  This ruling coupled with the new 
'serialized message' Clipper chip technology means that all of our 
conversations can legally be collected and warehoused for use at any 
future time.  Although the initiative stresses that the inclusion of 
Clipper technology into phones, modems, and computer networks is 
purely voluntary (at this time), this serializing represents a dangerous 
new capability for government intrusion into our unencumbered 
expression of ideas.
 
And of course determined criminals can use technology developed 
outside the United States to evade this new initiative anyway.  The 
administration's suggestion that this technology will thwart terrorist 
or drug traffickers is grossly overstated and misleading.
 
We all don't want criminals to evade proper warrants with the new 
secure encryption technologies, but the danger to our civil rights of 
this new Clipper Chip initiative and the signs that the government 
will use its wide dissemination to justify outlawing truly strong 
cryptography 'to fight drug traffickers and terrorists' in the future, is 
extremely troubling to me.
 
I would much prefer a that some criminals have secure conversations 
than the bulk of our citizens having their constitutional right to 
privacy reserved by the fourth and tenth amendment to the 
Constitution eroded.
 
Funding for the Clipper chip initiative should be axed unless with 
some reasonable certainty we citizens can assure ourselves of its 
guarantee of due process and protection of our civil rights.  
Congressman Edward J. Markey has also questioned the wisdom of 
this proposal; you may want to contact his office to consolidate 
information.
                                                                        
Very truly yours,
 
Grady Ward
        
 
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