Interesting People mailing list archives
700 Club Report on the Clipper Chip on Wednesday, October 20, 1993
From: David Farber <farber () central cis upenn edu>
Date: Tue, 2 Nov 1993 08:11:04 -0500
Date: Tue, 2 Nov 93 04:08:13 -0800 From: mlshew () netcom com (Mark Shewmaker) To: cypherpunks () toad com
On October 20, 1993, the 700 Club gave a report on the Clipper chip.
The report was fantastic. If you want to convince people why the
chip is so very dangerous, and why cryptographic freedoms are so
important, I recommend that you take a good look at this.
Most people don't take to overly technical explanations of things,
at least for the first round of explanations. This is an excellent
model of starter explanation for such people.
I've included a transcript of the show's Clipper segments.
Notice one important thing: The report is not overtly religious in
tone. It does not need to be. Encryption and privacy issues cut
across many political and religious lines. There is no need to
alienate the people you are trying to convince by insulting their
group affiliations.
Notes on the transcript: It includes only the Clipper-chip segments.
The transcript is in three sections. The first is from the intro to
the show where they show clips of future segments of that days show,
the second is the pre-commercial "Next: The Clipper chip, here on the
700 Club", and the last is the actual report.
All typos and inaccuracies are mine. The editing I did to the report
is: (1) remove "uh"'s (2) try to add returns in order to put the speech's
format into some semblance of paragraph form for easier reading, and
(3) change one case of two people talking simultaneously (at the end)
to one person saying a few words, followed by the other saying a few words.
People in the report: Ben Kinchlow and Terry Meeuwsen are the hosts,
who talk about the stories between themselves, and Julia Zaher is the
reporter for the story. She speaks both in a voiceover to the report,
and in the report, interviewing Jerry Berman, Lynn McNulty, Lance Hoffman,
and of course Dorothy Denning.
By the way, they showed the Clipper chip itself! Or, at least they
showed something they claimed to be the Clipper chip. Unfortunately,
there was no close-up, just the chip in someone's hand, with the chip
taking about a sixteenth of the screen. It looked like a 28 pin PLCC
package, with the cheaper tin plated leads. Odd that there are so few pins.
Here's the transcript:
[The following was clipped from the intros to the that day's topics]
Ben Kinchlow:
We've also got a word of caution for you because
very soon, if you're familiar with this song:
_Every_Move_You_Make,_Every_ _Step_You_Take: The
federal government could be watching you!
Jerry Berrman:
We are going to conduct our lives in electronic
media: Order our movies, order our television
shows, decide what schools we send our children
to, what programs we want to, what products we
want to buy, what magazines we want downloaded
into our homes.
Ben Kinchlow:
And if you're a big fan of large government, this
tiny computer chip could now give the government,
Big Brother, instant access to every detail of your
private life.
And we'll have details of that still to come.
Terry?
Terry Meeuwsen:
Right...Scary.
---
[The following is the pre-commercial message.]
---
Ben Kinchlow:
Well coming up next... The clipper computer chip.
It could be a key to invading your privacy.
We'll have that for you as the 700 club continues.
---
[The following is the actual report.]
---
Terry Meeuwsen: The famous line from the book _1984_ was
"Big Brother is watching you", and in the future,
that could prove to be true.
How would Big Brother watch you?
What method would he use?
Some privacy experts fear the means could be--
a computer chip. CBN News correspondent
Julia Zaher brings us the story from Washington.
Julia Zaher:
(voiceover)
The way we communicate is changing rapidly. It won't
be long before our telephone, our computer, and
perhaps even our television will all be one device.
Jerry Berman of the Electronic Frontier Foundation
says we'll use that device to conduct most of our
daily business, our personal business; and for some of
us, our professional business.
Jerry Berrman:
We are going to conduct our lives in electronic
media: Order our movies, order our television
shows, decide what schools we send our children
to, what programs we want, what products we want
to buy, what magazines we want downloaded into our
homes.
Julia Zaher:
(voiceover)
Berman and others in the communications and computer
industries welcome the innovative technology, but
they also worry that a new danger is threatening the
privacy of every American. The danger is that a
computerized record of nearly all of our activities
will be constantly accumulating. That record could
show virtually every move we make, from what we buy,
to how much money we make, to what political causes
we support.
To protect our privacy, Berman and others believes,
more people will start doing what the government and
the military have done for decades: Add scrambling
devices to telephones and computers, to keep
outsiders from tapping into important information
and conversations. That process of coding and
decoding information is called encryption.
Jerry Berrman:
Today we don't think of encrypting our
communications, but it will be done with a flick
of a button.
Julia Zaher:
(voiceover)
Already, AT&T makes a scrambling device for
telephones. Many businesses, especially those with
overseas offices, use these scrambling devices
routinely.
They also take advantage of the almost 300 computer
software programs available to code and decode
computer programs and electronic mail.
The Clinton administration has taken a great
interest in this information revolution, and the
government has invented its own scrambling device.
Lynn McNulty:
This is one of the clipper chips. The chip itself
costs about twenty-five dollars.
Julia Zaher:
(voiceover)
The new invention is known as the Clipper chip. The
chip is supposed to provide the strongest possible
method of coding phone, FAX, and computer
transmissions to prevent unwanted eavesdropping.
The chip is supposed to be on the market soon.
Lynn McNulty is with the National Institute of
Standards and Technology, known as NIST for short.
President Clinton has commissioned NIST to help make
the Clipper chip the highest standard for scrambling
information. The White House wants to see more
businesses and individuals use the Clipper chip to
protect their communications once it's on the market.
The reportedly unbreakable scrambling code in the
chip would be a big plus in the fight to keep
information private.
But there's a catch.
Lynn McNulty:
A good part of the technical details of the, that
underlie the standard will not be made public,
which is a departure from the way we've done
business in the past.
Julia Zaher:
(voiceover)
The details of how Clipper works and the keys that
can break the code are all being kept secret by the
government.
That has nearly everyone in the computer and
communications industries alarmed.
Lance Hoffman is a computer science and encryption
coding and decoding expert.
Lance Hoffman:
The administration wants to control the whole
process, and wants the government to control all
the keys, is what it boils down to--that's the
real problem.
Julia Zaher:
(voiceover)
The government says it alone must hold the keys that
can break Clipper's private scrambling code. That
would mean that only government agencies could
eavesdrop on computer and telephone transmissions.
Private agencies, or individuals like private
detectives couldn't do it.
The FBI and other law enforcement agencies say,
instead of getting court orders for wiretaps, in the
future they'll be routinely requesting codes that
are scrambling computers and telephones.
Dorothy Denning is one of the five outside computer
experts who had the chance to examine the Clipper
chip and try to break its code.
Julia Zaher:
And what happened?
Dorothy Denning:
I failed. I didn't break it.
Julia Zaher:
There was no way you could break it?
Dorothy Denning:
There was no way I could break it.
Julia Zaher:
(voiceover)
Denning is one of the very few people in the
computer science field who sees no danger in the
government holding the only keys that can break
Clipper's code.
Dorothy Denning:
...And this initiative does not in any way to
expand the government's authority to intercept
communications.
Julia Zaher:
(voiceover)
Denning also says Clipper's unbreakable code would
make it more difficult for police or the FBI to do
illegal wiretaps.
But Hoffman and many others disagree. They say that
all of the secrecy about how clipper works, combined
with the government alone holding the keys to break
the code, would put the privacy of everyone using
clipper in jeopardy.
Hoffman says that while the chip is just one of many
scrambling devices now, the government could
eventually argue that everyone coding their
information must use clipper
Lance Hoffman:
There's no reason they couldn't change their mind
at a later point and say "well we tried it
voluntari..." "We tried it as a voluntary measure,
it doesn't work, so now it's going to be
mandatory."
Julia Zaher:
(voiceover)
Privacy advocates like Jerry Berman point out the
government has been known to spy on citizens when it
believes they hold dangerous political opinions.
Jerry Berrman:
There are good governments, there are bad
governments. We've gone through abusive periods
where we've had intelligence agencies chasing
different political dissidents from the right and
left around.
We worry about these things.
Julia Zaher:
(reporting)
Computer coding and decoding standards may all seem
irrelevant at this point, but they'll be important
in the future to protect your privacy.
The government's Clipper chip is the most powerful
coding and decoding device developed so far.
It hasn't been decided yet if Clipper will be the one
national standard used to protect electronic
privacy, but if it is, it could also pose the
greatest threat, if those decoding keys, held by the
government, fall into the wrong hands.
Julia Zaire, CBN News, Washington.
Ben Kinchlow:
And some of us would say that the wrong hands for
them to fall into is the government! You know.
What your talking about here, essentially, is a
giant superhighway. This is what the President,
Vice-President Gore is recommending--that we have
this super-highway, which on the surface is
wonderful. It enables us all across the world to hook up and,
you know, exchange information and communications
with people, and that's a wonderful idea, and we
need to take full advantage of what's going on in
technology today: Marvelous things.
Like one of our cameramen is hooked up to something
called Internet, where you can pull out files from
the university of Tokyo, if you will.
I mean, it's a wonderful idea.
The problem is, when the government comes in and
starts saying, "The only" I mean, everybody has
this scrambling device, but the only people who
can unscramble this device is the government.
But the government says that "we must have this"
in order to track down criminals and terrorists.
The problem is, "criminals and terrorists"
eventually become who the government says
"criminals and terrorists" are.
And it will not be long before anybody who
disagrees with the government, then, can become a
criminal, and his whole activities can be tracked
down.
And indeed what Orwell said about 1984 becomes a
reality.
The Big Brother has the capacity to watch you,
track you.
And by the way, interestingly enough, they do
have, and have developed, a small uh
Terry Meeuwsen:
Oh, I don't want to know this
Ben Kinchlow:
tracking device that goes under
Terry Meeuwsen:
Under the skin?
Ben Kinchlow:
under your skin. In fact, they used some of it,
according to one report I read, over in the war
that just took place in the middle east, so they
could track our men by satellite.
Terry Meeuwsen:
Well, you know [sigh], the bottom line is that
it's the same thing we've been hearing day after
day after day: More government control, more
government control. So, we need to hear that...
Ben Kinchlow:
The operative word here being 'control.'
Terry Meeuwsen:
Yeah.
Ben Kinchlow:
Watch it.
Current thread:
- 700 Club Report on the Clipper Chip on Wednesday, October 20, 1993 David Farber (Nov 02)