IP: Sam Nunn: Our new best friend?

[Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>]

Some notes from today's Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Technology,
Terrorism and Government Information:


Chaired by Sen. Kyl
In attendance: Sen. Feinstein


First Panel:


Jamie Gorelick & Sam Nunn, Co-Chairs, President's Advisory Committee on
Critical Infrastructure Protection


This was a hearing on the general subject of steps that the federal
government should take to protect 'critical' domestic infrastructures from
both foreign and domestic threats.  I'd note that even though the hearing
was meant to discuss threats to a wide range of critical infrastructures
(transport, financial services, telecom, water, etc. the only issue really
dealt with was the Internet and other telecom infrastructures.) Without
going into the whole issue (which is important) or the whole hearing, here
are a couple of points particularly relevant the civil liberties & national
security in general, and encryption policy in particular.


Sen. Sam Nunn
-------------


**On encryption:


Reolve the issue: It is vital that the current stalemate over encryption
policy be resolved soon because 1) strong encryption is critical to the
security of domestic infrastructures, and 2) failure to resolve the
deadlock between government and the industry has lead to such a high level
of mistrust by industry that it is difficult to make any progress on any
other infrastructure protection issues since those issue require a high
degree of cooperation.


Barriers to resolving the issue:
1) there's a large amount of unrealistic thinking about the crypto/law
enforcement problem. Leading his list of "unrealistic" assumptions are:
        -it's unrealistic to assume that government can control technology
        -key recovery can't work except by global agreement
        -law enforcement needs lots of help with new technologies,
        with or without key recovery
        -nostalgia for the good-old days of easy wiretapping is mistaken
        and unrealistic


2) the Clinton Administration is unable to reach a resolution to this
statemate because it has set up an internal policy process whereby 5
cabinet agencies have virtual veto power.  Nunn recommends that the NSC
needs to spend more time on this directly and just get the issue settled.


**On constitutional barriers to Pentagon involvement in domestic
infrastructure criminal investigations:


Contrary to the view that John Deutch has taken, Nunn sounded that alarm
several times that there are real constitutional limits on the degree to
which the Pentagon can or should get involved in domestic law enforcement
matters such as investigation of attacks on domestic infrastructure.  He
suggested instead that large number of DoD employees should be detailed to
FBI or Justice to provide technical assistance in emergency situations or
difficult investigations.




I've left our a lot of interesting points, including Sen. Feinstein's
lament about how hard it is to deal with 'libertarian' computer industry
types, but you'll have to see the press reports for that.


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Center for Democracy and Technology             +1 202.637.9800 (v)


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****************************************************************************


Professor David Farber         
The Alfred Fitler Moore Professor of Telecommunication Systems


University of Pennsylvania      
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