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I Oppose Clipper! (fwd)

1994-02-26 00:37:53
Another important message about the future of YOUR privacy from spying
eyes at NSA, CIA, FBI, your local sherrif ...

Read the following article from WIRED magazine, entitled
"Jackboots on the Infobahn" for more insight on the impending Clipper
debacle.  By the way, I OPPOSE CLIPPER! I support any efforts to kill the
clipper initiative, digital telephony, and lift the export embargo on 
encryption products.

Please READ, DISTRIBUTE, and ACT!  There are e-mail addresses you can 
send to in the text.


=-=-=-=-=-=-Copyright 1993,4 Wired USA Ltd.  All Rights Reserved=-=-=-=-=-=
-=-=For complete copyright information, please see the end of this file=-=-

WIRED 2.04
Jackboots on the Infobahn

Clipper is a last ditch attempt by the United States, the last great power 
from the old Industrial Era, to establish imperial control over cyberspace. 

By John Perry Barlow 

[Note: The following article will appear in the April 1994 issue of WIRED. 
We, the editors of WIRED, are net-casting it now in its pre-published form as 
a public service. Because of the vital and urgent nature of its message, we 
believe readers on the Net should hear and take action now. You are free to 
pass this article on electronically; in fact we urge you to replicate it 
throughout the net with our blessings. If you do, please keep the copyright 
statements and this note intact. For a complete listing of Clipper-related 
resources available through WIRED Online, send email to with the following 
message: "send clipper.index". - The Editors of WIRED] 

On January 11, I managed to schmooze myself aboard Air Force 2. It was flying 
out of LA, where its principal passenger had just outlined his vision of the 
information superhighway to a suited mob of television, show- biz, and cable 
types who fervently hoped to own it one day - if they could ever figure out 
what the hell it was. 

From the standpoint of the Electronic Frontier Foundation the speech had been 
wildly encouraging. The administration's program, as announced by Vice 
President Al Gore, incorporated many of the concepts of open competition, 
universal access, and deregulated common carriage that we'd been pushing for 
the previous year. 

But he had said nothing about the future of privacy, except to cite among the 
bounties of the NII its ability to "help law enforcement agencies thwart 
criminals and terrorists who might use advanced telecommunications to commit 

On the plane I asked Gore what this implied about administration policy on 
cryptography. He became as noncommittal as a cigar-store Indian. "We'll be 
making some announcements.... I can't tell you anything more." He hurried to 
the front of the plane, leaving me to troubled speculation. 

Despite its fundamental role in assuring privacy, transaction security, and 
reliable identity within the NII, the Clinton administration has not 
demonstrated an enlightenment about cryptography up to par with the rest of 
its digital vision. 

The Clipper Chip - which threatens to be either the goofiest waste of federal 
dollars since President Gerald Ford's great Swine Flu program or, if actually 
deployed, a surveillance technology of profound malignancy - seemed at first 
an ugly legacy of the Reagan-Bush modus operandi. "This is going to be our 
Bay of Pigs," one Clinton White House official told me at the time Clipper 
was introduced, referring to the disastrous plan to invade Cuba that Kennedy 
inherited from Eisenhower. 

(Clipper, in case you're just tuning in, is an encryption chip that the 
National Security Agency and FBI hope will someday be in every phone and 
computer in America. It scrambles your communications, making them 
unintelligible to all but their intended recipients. All, that is, but the 
government, which would hold the "key" to your chip. The key would separated 
into two pieces, held in escrow, and joined with the appropriate "legal 

Of course, trusting the government with your privacy is like having a Peeping 
Tom install your window blinds. And, since the folks I've met in this White 
House seem like extremely smart, conscious freedom-lovers - hell, a lot of 
them are Deadheads - I was sure that after they were fully moved in, they'd 
face down the National Security Agency and the FBI, let Clipper die a natural 
death, and lower the export embargo on reliable encryption products. 

Furthermore, the National Institutes of Standards and Technology and the 
National Security Council have been studying both Clipper and export 
embargoes since April. Given that the volumes of expert testimony they had 
collected overwhelmingly opposed both, I expected the final report would give 
the administration all the support it needed to do the right thing. 

I was wrong. Instead, there would be no report. Apparently, they couldn't 
draft one that supported, on the evidence, what they had decided to do 

The Other Shoe Drops

On Friday, February 4, the other jackboot dropped. A series of announcements 
from the administration made it clear that cryptography would become their 
very own "Bosnia of telecommunications" (as one staffer put it). It wasn't 
just that the old Serbs in the National Security Agency and the FBI were 
still making the calls. The alarming new reality was that the invertebrates 
in the White House were only too happy to abide by them. Anything to avoid 
appearing soft on drugs or terrorism. 

So, rather than ditching Clipper, they declared it a Federal Data Processing 
Standard, backing that up with an immediate government order for 50,000 
Clipper devices. They appointed the National Institutes of Standards and 
Technology and the Department of Treasury as the "trusted" third parties that 
would hold the Clipper key pairs. (Treasury, by the way, is also home to such 
trustworthy agencies as the Secret Service and the Bureau of Alcohol, 
Tobacco, and Firearms.) 

They reaffirmed the export embargo on robust encryption products, admitting 
for the first time that its purpose was to stifle competition to Clipper. And 
they outlined a very porous set of requirements under which the cops might 
get the keys to your chip. (They would not go into the procedure by which the 
National Security Agency could get them, though they assured us it was 

They even signaled the impending return of the dread Digital Telephony, an 
FBI legislative initiative requiring fundamental reengineering of the 
information infrastructure; providing wiretapping ability to the FBI would 
then become the paramount design priority. 

Invasion of the Body Snatchers

Actually, by the time the announcements thudded down, I wasn't surprised by 
them. I had spent several days the previous week in and around the White 

I felt like I was in another remake of The Invasion of the Body Snatchers. My 
friends in the administration had been transformed. They'd been subsumed by 
the vast mindfield on the other side of the security clearance membrane, 
where dwell the monstrous bureaucratic organisms that feed on fear. They'd 
been infected by the institutionally paranoid National Security Agency's 

They used all the telltale phrases. Mike Nelson, the White House point man on 
the NII, told me, "If only I could tell you what I know, you'd feel the same 
way I do." I told him I'd been inoculated against that argument during 
Vietnam. (And it does seem to me that if you're going to initiate a process 
that might end freedom in America, you probably need an argument that isn't 

Besides, how does he know what he knows? Where does he get his information? 
Why, the National Security Agency, of course. Which, given its strong 
interest in the outcome, seems hardly an unimpeachable source. 

However they reached it, Clinton and Gore have an astonishingly simple bottom 
line, to which even the future of American liberty and prosperity is 
secondary: They believe that it is their responsibility to eliminate, by 
whatever means, the possibility that some terrorist might get a nuke and use 
it on, say, the World Trade Center. They have been convinced that such plots 
are more likely to ripen to hideous fruition behind a shield of encryption. 

The staffers I talked to were unmoved by the argument that anyone smart 
enough to steal a nuclear device is probably smart enough to use PGP or some 
other uncompromised crypto standard. And never mind that the last people who 
popped a hooter in the World Trade Center were able to get it there without 
using any cryptography and while under FBI surveillance. 

We are dealing with religion here. Though only ten American lives have been 
lost to terrorism in the last two years, the primacy of this threat has 
become as much an article of faith with these guys as the Catholic conviction 
that human life begins at conception or the Mormon belief that the Lost Tribe 
of Israel crossed the Atlantic in submarines. 

In the spirit of openness and compromise, they invited the Electronic 
Frontier Foundation to submit other solutions to the "problem" of the nuclear-
enabled terrorist than key escrow devices, but they would not admit into 
discussion the argument that such a threat might, in fact, be some kind of 
phantasm created by the spooks to ensure their lavish budgets into the post-
Cold War era. 

As to the possibility that good old-fashioned investigative techniques might 
be more valuable in preventing their show-case catastrophe (as it was after 
the fact in finding the alleged perpetrators of the last attack on the World 
Trade Center), they just hunkered down and said that when wiretaps were 
necessary, they were damned well necessary. 

When I asked about the business that American companies lose because of their 
inability to export good encryption products, one staffer essentially 
dismissed the market, saying that total world trade in crypto goods was still 
less than a billion dollars. (Well, right. Thanks more to the diligent 
efforts of the National Security Agency than to dim sales potential.) 

I suggested that a more immediate and costly real-world effect of their 
policies would be to reduce national security by isolating American commerce, 
owing to a lack of international confidence in the security of our data 
lines. I said that Bruce Sterling's fictional data-enclaves in places like 
the Turks and Caicos Islands were starting to look real-world inevitable. 

They had a couple of answers to this, one unsatisfying and the other scary. 
The unsatisfying answer was that the international banking community could 
just go on using DES, which still seemed robust enough to them. (DES is the 
old federal Data Encryption Standard, thought by most cryptologists to be 
nearing the end of its credibility.) 

More frightening was their willingness to counter the data-enclave future 
with one in which no data channels anywhere would be secure from examination 
by one government or another. Pointing to unnamed other countries that were 
developing their own mandatory standards and restrictions regarding 
cryptography, they said words to the effect of, "Hey, it's not like you can't 
outlaw the stuff. Look at France." 

Of course, they have also said repeatedly - and for now I believe them - that 
they have absolutely no plans to outlaw non-Clipper crypto in the US. But 
that doesn't mean that such plans wouldn't develop in the presence of some 
pending "emergency." Then there is that White House briefing document, issued 
at the time Clipper was first announced, which asserts that no US citizen "as 
a matter of right, is entitled to an unbreakable commercial encryption 

Now why, if it's an ability they have no intention of contesting, do they 
feel compelled to declare that it's not a right? Could it be that they are 
preparing us for the laws they'll pass after some bearded fanatic has gotten 
himself a surplus nuke and used something besides Clipper to conceal his 
plans for it? 

If they are thinking about such an eventuality, we should be doing so as 
well. How will we respond? I believe there is a strong, though currently 
untested, argument that outlawing unregulated crypto would violate the First 
Amendment, which surely protects the manner of our speech as clearly as it 
protects the content. 

But of course the First Amendment is, like the rest of the Constitution, only 
as good as the government's willingness to uphold it. And they are, as I say, 
in the mood to protect our safety over our liberty. 

This is not a mind-frame against which any argument is going to be very 
effective. And it appeared that they had already heard and rejected every 
argument I could possibly offer. 

In fact, when I drew what I thought was an original comparison between their 
stand against naturally proliferating crypto and the folly of King Canute 
(who placed his throne on the beach and commanded the tide to leave him dry), 
my government opposition looked pained and said he had heard that one almost 
as often as jokes about roadkill on the information superhighway. 

I hate to go to war with them. War is always nastier among friends. 
Furthermore, unless they've decided to let the National Security Agency 
design the rest of the National Information Infrastructure as well, we need 
to go on working closely with them on the whole range of issues like access, 
competition, workplace privacy, common carriage, intellectual property, and 
such. Besides, the proliferation of strong crypto will probably happen 
eventually no matter what they do. 

But then again, it might not. In which case we could shortly find ourselves 
under a government that would have the automated ability to log the time, 
origin and recipient of every call we made, could track our physical 
whereabouts continuously, could keep better account of our financial 
transactions than we do, and all without a warrant. Talk about crime 

Worse, under some vaguely defined and surely mutable "legal authority," they 
also would be able to listen to our calls and read our e-mail without having 
to do any backyard rewiring. They wouldn't need any permission at all to 
monitor overseas calls. 

If there's going to be a fight, I'd rather it be with this government than 
the one we'd likely face on that hard day. 

Hey, I've never been a paranoid before. It's always seemed to me that most 
governments are too incompetent to keep a good plot strung together all the 
way from coffee break to quitting time. But I am now very nervous about the 
government of the United States of America. 

Because Bill 'n' Al, whatever their other new-paradigm virtues, have allowed 
the very old-paradigm trogs of the Guardian Class to define as their highest 
duty the defense of America against an enemy that exists primarily in the 
imagination - and is therefore capable of anything. 

To assure absolute safety against such an enemy, there is no limit to the 
liberties we will eventually be asked to sacrifice. And, with a Clipper Chip 
in every phone, there will certainly be no technical limit on their ability 
to enforce those sacrifices. 


Get Congress to Lift the Crypto Embargo

The administration is trying to impose Clipper on us by manipulating market 
forces. By purchasing massive numbers of Clipper devices, they intend to 
induce an economy of scale which will make them cheap while the export 
embargo renders all competition either expensive or nonexistent. 

We have to use the market to fight back. While it's unlikely that they'll 
back down on Clipper deployment, the Electronic Frontier Foundation believes 
that with sufficient public involvement, we can get Congress to eliminate the 
export embargo. 

Rep. Maria Cantwell, D-Washington, has a bill (H.R. 3627) before the Economic 
Policy, Trade, and Environment Subcommittee of the House Committee on Foreign 
Affairs that would do exactly that. She will need a lot of help from the 
public. They may not care much about your privacy in DC, but they still care 
about your vote. 

Please signal your support of H.R. 3627, either by writing her directly or e-
mailing her at cantwell(_at_)eff(_dot_)org(_dot_) Messages sent to that address 
will be 
printed out and delivered to her office. In the subject header of your 
message, please include the words "support HR 3627." In the body of your 
message, express your reasons for supporting the bill. You may also express 
your sentiments to Rep. Lee Hamilton, D-Indiana, the House Committee on 
Foreign Affairs chair, by e-mailing hamilton(_at_)eff(_dot_)org(_dot_) 

Furthermore, since there is nothing quite as powerful as a letter from a 
constituent, you should check the following list of subcommittee and 
committee members to see if your congressional representative is among them. 
If so, please copy them your letter to Rep. Cantwell. 

Economic Policy, Trade, and Environment Subcommittee: 

Democrats: Sam Gejdenson (Chair), D-Connecticut; James Oberstar, D- 
Minnesota; Cynthia McKinney, D-Georgia; Maria Cantwell, D-Washington; Eric 
Fingerhut, D-Ohio; Albert R. Wynn, D-Maryland; Harry Johnston, D-Florida; 
Eliot Engel, D-New York; Charles Schumer, D-New York. 

Republicans: Toby Roth (ranking), R-Wisconsin; Donald Manzullo, R-Illinois; 
Doug Bereuter, R-Nebraska; Jan Meyers, R-Kansas; Cass Ballenger, R-North 
Carolina; Dana Rohrabacher, R-California. 

House Committee on Foreign Affairs: 

Democrats: Lee Hamilton (Chair), D-Indiana; Tom Lantos, D-California; Robert 
Torricelli, D-New Jersey; Howard Berman, D-California; Gary Ackerman, D-New 
York; Eni Faleomavaega, D-Somoa; Matthew Martinez, D- California; Robert 
Borski, D-Pennsylvania; Donal Payne, D-New Jersey; Robert Andrews, D-New 
Jersey; Robert Menendez, D-New Jersey; Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio; Alcee Hastings, 
D-Florida; Peter Deutsch, D-Florida; Don Edwards, D-California; Frank 
McCloskey, D-Indiana; Thomas Sawyer, D-Ohio; Luis Gutierrez, D-Illinois. 

Republicans: Benjamin Gilman (ranking), R-New York; William Goodling, R- 
Pennsylvania; Jim Leach, R-Iowa; Olympia Snowe, R-Maine; Henry Hyde, R- 
Illinois; Christopher Smith, R-New Jersey; Dan Burton, R-Indiana; Elton 
Gallegly, R-California; Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Florida; David Levy, R-New 
York; Lincoln Diaz-Balart, R-Florida; Ed Royce, R-California. 

Boycott Clipper Devices and the Companies Which Make Them.

Don't buy anything with a Clipper Chip in it. Don't buy any product from a 
company that manufactures devices with Big Brother inside. It is likely that 
the government will ask you to use Clipper for communications with the IRS or 
when doing business with federal agencies. They cannot, as yet, require you 
to do so. Just say no. 

Learn About Encryption and Explain the Issues to Your Unwired Friends

The administration is banking on the likelihood that this stuff is too 
technically obscure to agitate anyone but nerds like us. Prove them wrong by 
patiently explaining what's going on to all the people you know who have 
never touched a computer and glaze over at the mention of words like 

Maybe you glaze over yourself. Don't. It's not that hard. For some hands-on 
experience, download a copy of PGP - Pretty Good Privacy - a shareware 
encryption engine which uses the robust RSA encryption algorithm. And learn 
to use it. 

Get Your Company to Think About Embedding Real Cryptography in Its Products

If you work for a company that makes software, computer hardware, or any kind 
of communications device, work from within to get them to incorporate RSA or 
some other strong encryption scheme into their products. If they say that 
they are afraid to violate the export embargo, ask them to consider 
manufacturing such products overseas and importing them back into the United 
States. There appears to be no law against that. Yet. 

You might also lobby your company to join the Digital Privacy and Security 
Working Group, a coalition of companies and public interest groups - 
including IBM, Apple, Sun, Microsoft, and, interestingly, Clipper phone 
manufacturer AT&T - that is working to get the embargo lifted. 


Self-serving as it sounds coming from me, you can do a lot to help by 
becoming a member of one of these organizations. In addition to giving you 
access to the latest information on this subject, every additional member 
strengthens our credibility with Congress. 

Join the Electronic Frontier Foundation by writing 

Join Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility by e-mailing 
cpsr(_dot_)info(_at_)cpsr(_dot_)org(_dot_) CPSR is also organizing a protest, 
to which you can lend 
your support by sending e-mail to clipper(_dot_)petition(_at_)cpsr(_dot_)org 
with "I oppose 
Clipper" in the message body. 

To go to a CPSR Archive click on one of the following links: 

? FTP 
? Gopher 

In his LA speech, Gore called the development of the NII "a revolution." And 
it is a revolutionary war we are engaged in here. Clipper is a last ditch 
attempt by the United States, the last great power from the old Industrial 
Era, to establish imperial control over cyberspace. If they win, the most 
liberating development in the history of humankind could become, instead, the 
surveillance system which will monitor our grandchildren's morality. We can 
be better ancestors than that. 

San Francisco, California 

Wednesday, February 9, 1994 

                                   * * *

John Perry Barlow (barlow(_at_)eff(_dot_)org) is co-founder and Vice-Chairman 
of the 
Electronic Frontier Foundation, a group which defends liberty, both in 
Cyberspace and the Physical World. He has three daughters. 

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     NYNEX Science & Technology        (914) 644-2153 Fax
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