UK Press coverage of Clipper

[David Farber <farber () central cis upenn edu>]

How America plans to bug the electronic age
Big Brother joins scramble for data


By Leonard Doyle


'Whether we like it or not, authorities will want to listen in on our
communications'


A HIGH-RANKING official of the National Security Agency, America's largest
and most secretive intelligence arm, is in London with the task of selling
the 16 governments of the European Union and European Free Trade
Association on the virtues of a controversial electronic scrambling
technology.


The Clinton administration hopes that the encryption devices will become
the global standard for anyone wanting privacy while using cellular phones,
computer networks and fax transmissions. They have a serious drawback for
anyone looking for total privacy, however. The devices have a built-in
"back door" that will allow spy agencies to listen in on all
communications, or read faxes and electronic mail.


Spy agencies in the US and Europe, with nearly 50 years' experience of
advanced technology in surveillance of citizens, suspected criminals and
foreign governments, have been concerned for some time about developments
that have put sophisticated encryption devices within reach of many.


The agencies want to ensure that they are not left behind by the rapid
advances in high technology which have made telephone scramblers and the
mathematical codes used to encrypt computer and fax data relatively cheap
and easy to use.


The governments fear that electronic eavesdropping will be set back decades
if and when terrorists, money-launderers, drug traffickers and unfriendly
governments gain widespread access to the technology. The NSA is concerned
that, despite the $30bn (£21bn) a year it spends monitoring global
communications, it cannot keep pace with technological change and the
massive spread of encryption codes.


The NSA official, James Hearn, who until recently was the deputy director
for information security at NSA's sprawling headquarters near Washington
DC, is heading up a "liaison office" in London with a colleague, Clint
Brooks, according to reliable sources in the computer security community on
both sides of the Atlantic. The US Embassy in London issued a pro forma
denial about Mr Hearn's presence yesterday, saying: "There's nobody by that
name here."


Mr Hearn is well known, however, to UK and European officials at the
cutting edge of efforts to control the spread of highly sophisticated
scrambling devices. These encryption codes, developed by private software
companies, are putting communication beyond easy reach of the NSA,
Britain's GCHQ at Cheltenham and France's DGSE, to name but a few "Big Ear"
agencies.


As a response, the US has developed an encoding device for telephones and
computers known as the "Clipper Chip", with a "back door" that will allow
spy agencies armed with special electronic keys to eavesdrop. When the
Clinton administration decided to press ahead with the controversial coding
devices last week, the computer industry and privacy campaigners reacted
with outrage.


"It's like trying to order people to use only resealable envelopes for
correspondence, so that no communication can ever be private again," said
David Bannisar of Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility.


Big computer companies including IBM and Apple, are bitterly opposed to the
new monitoring devices. But AT&T the US telephone company, which is fast
establishing itself in Europe, will put the eavesdropping technology into
the telephone scrambling devices it sells in high street shops for about
£800 each.


The US is keen to ensure that similar electronic monitoring technology
becomes standard in the rest of the industrialised world. The NSA's Mr
Hearn has the task of persuading governments that the controversial Clipper
Chip for telephones and a technology called Tessera, for computer modems,
is quickly adopted despite mounting opposition.


The US, European Commission and four European Union countries - Britain,
Germany, France and the Netherlands - are already deciding how to
administer the dawning electronic age of "information highways" which will
bring an explosion in the use of hi-tech in everyday lives.


A consultant to the European Commission who has worked on the new
encryption standards claims that those who object to US efforts to regulate
the market for encryption are "politically naive".
"Whether we like it or not, the authorities will want to listen in on our
communications," he said. "The Americans are to be admired for being up
front about it, when other countries are doing the same thing anyway."


Experts in the field of information security often speak of physical
boundaries that now define the world being replaced by electronic
boundaries. In this Orwellian world, which is at most five years away,
people will be issued with so-called "smartcards" with microchips that can
store their entire personal history. The identity cards will be a passport
for ordinary citizens, used to store health records, for personal banking
paying for travel and for identity checks at borders.


In the same way, companies and even countries will be expected to use
technology like the encryption Clipper Chip for data transmissions.


"We are defining our new electronic world - which will become increasingly
important in a borderless Europe," the EU security consultant said.