NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #27/NN_1992_27.iso/spool/sci/crypt/4916

Text File | 1992-11-17 | 8.8 KB | 143 lines

Newsgroups: sci.crypt
Path: sparky!uunet!cis.ohio-state.edu!pacific.mps.ohio-state.edu!linac!uchinews!gargoyle.uchicago.edu!hugh
From: [e-mail] (Hugh Miller)
Subject: Re: Demons and Ogres
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Sender: [e-mail] (News System)
Organization: University of Chicago Computing Organizations
References: <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]>
Date: Tue, 17 Nov 1992 06:39:17 GMT
Lines: 131

    Chris Browne's wonderful post is the very voice of reason, although
it's a gone a little short of replies due, I suppose, to the clang of
various metallic balloons.  (Phil Zimmermann's post of Nov. 17, I note
happily, makes many of the same points.)

    He is, of course, exactly right.  It does those of us who support
freely accessible practically secure cryptography no good at all to get
tied up in endless wrangles amongst ourselves as to, in effect, who is
the true keeper of the privacy (etc.) flame.  Phil Zimmermann's joke
about the leftist firing squad is apropos.  (When I was in graduate
school at Toronto a friend of a friend in the St. George Graduate
Residence used to play a game he called `Anarchist Snooker.' It was set
up like regular snooker, only the balls had meanings: the yellow ball
stood for `The Press,' the green for `Capital,' the brown for `Fascism,'
the blue for `The Military-Industrial Complex,' the pink for
`Socialism,' the black for `Anarchism,' the white (cue) ball for `The
Will of the People,' and the 15 reds, each differently labelled with a
grease pen, stood for the various communist factions.  After each shot
you had to stop and expound the politics of the layout of the table. The
game pointed up the endless, senseless wrangling among the factions of
the left, and what was especially cute was that, as in regular snooker,
once all the red balls were in the pockets and gone, the other balls
(`The Press,' `Capital,' `Fascism,' `The Military-Industrial Complex,')
remained on the table and still in play.)

    Dr. Denning speaks from the perspective of one who deals with the
sorts of people to whom Chris Browne refers -- the sort of people who
would be likely to find even the `Modest Proposal' she floats in her
initial (`lead') and revised (`copper') key-registration schemes too
anarchistic and subversive for their tastes.  A genuine defense of
freely accessible practically secure cryptography must attempt to
address some of their concerns, even if we cannot hope to win over the
more pathologically control-minded.  In the battle for the hearts and
minds of the general public and the legislators we have to provide
arguments which will be, as Browne says, "convincing to someone who has
no problem with `strong government' as well as to someone who believes
the government should either be small or nonexistent."  And, as Phil Z.
notes, one has got to take into account the misuse of crypto, and
provide convincing, not just abstract or logically valid, arguments for
its use despite that potential for misuse.

    To start the ball rolling, a few initial efforts:

  I.    Freely accessible practically secure cryptography (FAPSC) is an
        area in which the interests of private corporations and the
        interests (some would say rights) of private individuals to be
        secure in their persons and papers converge.  (They, ahem, don't
        always.)  As one of the recent contributors to the discussion on
        sci.crypt noted (I can't remember who, sorry!), it was supremely
        ironic that in the same Congressional testimony in which he
        lamented the explosive growth in recent years of industrial
        espionage, FBI Director William Sessions went on record as
        opposing FAPSC.  Making FAPSC illegal for the general populace
        will severely impact the security of internal corporate
        communications.  (Individual corporations are, I think, unlikely
        to win exemptions to such legislation unless they do contract
        work with the government, and then only on those specific
        contracts.)  Such a general ukase on FAPSC would thus hurt
        American business in a competitive world market.  This kind of
        argument is already being made by many corporations, and loudly.

  II.   From my educated layman's view of the intelligence-gathering
        process, two critical problems faced by analysts are (1)
        identifying the needles of valuable information in the haystack
        of more-or-less irrelevant data, and (2) correctly interpreting
        that information for the end-user.  The presence of FAPSC would
        not affect the second problem at all, as it is internal to the
        relationship of the intelligence-gatherer and the end-user. It
        _would_ affect the first problem, in certain ways.  It would of
        course reduce the size of the haystack, since most of the bits
        flowing into the intercept horns and linetaps would be
        encrypted.  Some informational `needles' would doubtless be
        obscured as well, and it is this prospect which exercises those
        who oppose FAPSC.  But consider that the kind of
        information-gathering facility which would be most impacted by
        FAPSC is the one about which almost everybody in this debate has
        the most misgivings: brute-force keyword searches on very-broad-
        band comm trunks.  Here the analogy with paper mail is most apt
        and should be played up for all it's worth: no one (or almost no
        one) would agree that the government ought to be in the business
        of steaming open and reading every letter passing through the
        U.S. Postal Service in the hopes of catching someone plotting to
        sell drugs or distribute kiddie porn, reprehensible as we find
        such activities to be.  (Wartime mail censorhip is, of course,
        the sole exception to this rule; but we haven't been formally at
        war in a _very_ long time, and we have shown no inclination to
        accept it or other related wartime expediencies even at the
        height of the Korean, Vietnam, Drug, and Persian Gulf wars.)  If
        by some other means (e.g. HUMINT) an intelligence-gathering
        agency discovers several parties communicating for possibly
        illegal purposes, it may obtain a court order by due process and
        proceed to eavesdrop.  That the data stream that it intercepts
        will be encrypted may not turn out to be a big problem, for
        reasons given below.  So, taken all in all, when one counts the
        (small) possible losses in information from ubiquitous FAPSC
        against the enormous benefits to business and private citizens
        from having it in place, it is clear that the balance of utility
        is on the side of the latter option.  (Most folks love
        cost-benefit analyses.)

   III. I propose that -- and this is, admiitedly, a stretch --
        ubiquitous FAPSC would tend to _improve_ the quality of
        intelligence gathered from telecomm.  Suppose, for the sake of
        argument, that Agency N gets information that individuals A and
        B are involved in what appears to be a conspiracy to, say, sell
        illicitly acquired industrial secrets to company C. Further
        assume that A and B are not professionals, i.e., trained spies;
        assume rather that they use common carriers for their
        communications and a trusted FAPSC package such as RIPEM or PGP.
        Such persons are likely, given the current understanding of
        FAPSC in the general populace, to be rather too credulous and
        trusting of their security system.  This makes them easy
        pickings for Agency N.  A quick trip in a Tempest van or a
        black-bag job to obtain the secret keys of one or both parties,
        and a wiretap, and Agency N can listen to their correspondence
        until at least the next keychange, and maybe beyond.  It can
        even spoof one or both parties and insert disinformation into
        the communications stream between A and B, and have that
        information acted on in complete trust of its authenticity.
        This is the key point: a shallow understanding of current crypto
        security (especially asymmetric cryptosystem) would lead the
        likes of A and B to be more easily monitored and duped.  Shallow
        understanding is about all that most nonprofessionals would ever
        exhibit.  As for the professionals, of course, special means
        will, and have always been, required to catch them; and the
        presence of ubiquitous FAPSC will not make that task any more
        onerous than it already is.

    More needs to be done.  Add to the list, or tear these apart.
Hugh Miller         | Dept. of Philosophy | Loyola University of Chicago
Voice: 312-508-2727 |  FAX: [phone]  |    [e-mail]