IP: current activities in Clipper II

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

Distributed by the Voters Telecommunications Watch


VTW has been chronicaling the government's attempts at forcing Clipper II
onto the public and industry.  Of course, it is still extremely unpopular.
At the Sep. 6th and 7th NIST workshop, industry and public interest
groups panned the plan and small working groups setup by NIST to evaluate
the criteria unhappily participated, even openly revolting in some instances.


On Sep 15th, NIST held another workshop to discuss the FIPS (Federal
Information Processing Standard) that would embody Clipper II (also
know as Commercial Key Escrow).  Believe it or not, this meeting was not
a repeat of the Sep 6th/7th meeting.  Several attendees noticed significant
differences:


HEIGHTENED GOVERNMENT PRESENCE


At the Sep 6th/7th workshop, dissent among industry and public
representatives interfered with NIST's attempts at having a discussion
about the specifics of Clipper II.  Simply put, industry and the public
advocates didn't like the plan.  Therefore discussions of the details
were fruitless.  One smaller working group simply refused to work on
the details and issued a statement condemning the whole Clipper II plan.


The government upped the number of Federal participants at the Sep. 15th
meeting in order to prevent the repeat of such an event.  Several public
advocates noticed a high percentage of government-provided participants in
the working groups.  One civil liberties advocate noted that he had never
seen so many NSA individuals identifying themselves in public before.


Needless to say the tactic worked.  Little in the way of opposition to
the plan was voiced.


BURNOUT AMONG INDUSTRY AND PUBLIC REPRESENTATIVES


Having been through this Kafka-esque exercise a mere two years ago with
the original Clipper plan, industry and public advocates are showing
signs of burnout.  It's fairly clear that their concerns are not being
listened to.  Both the public and the industry clearly sent a message to
the Clinton Administration when the original Clipper was proposed.
Said F. Lynn McNulty of NIST in the New York Times Magazine (6/12/94), "We
received 320 comments, only 2 of which were supportive."


NIST made the Clipper Chip a government standard anyway, and it flopped
in the marketplace.  How many of those Clipper-phones do you see running
around?  The government's so-called "stupid criminals" are just falling
over themselves to buy them, aren't they?  NIST has stated that it has
already been decided to make Clipper II a standard, before receiving any
public input.  Is this how democracy is supposed to work?


COMMERCIAL CHEERLEADING FROM SELECT INDUSTRY INDIVIDUALS


If you're wondering how the Clinton administration can get away with
pushing such a disastrous proposal again, look no further than select
members of the hardware and software industry.  Several companies that
make both security software, hardware devices and several key escrow
companies are pushing Clipper II because they incorrectly believe that
the government will not make it mandatory, and because they believe
the industry wants key escrow.


VTW believes they have it half-right: industry wants key escrow, though
not on the Clinton Administration's terms.  It is clear, however, that
the Administration will not allow key-escrow to be a voluntary program.


The EPIC (Electronic Privacy Information Center) has proved that the
government has enough common sense to know that key escrow is going to be
unpopular and will have to be forced on the marketplace. (See FOIA'd
documents at URL:http://www.epic.org/crypto/).


Never the less, several companies who want to produce hardware key
escrowed devices, key escrowed software, and become escrow holders have
become the champions of the Clipper II (Commercial Key Escrow)
program.  With their support, VTW predicts that the Clinton
Administration will ratify Clipper II as a FIPS standard over the
objections of industry and public.


Stay tuned to BillWatch for progress on Clipper II.