Date: 3 Mar 1994 12:12:08 -0500 From: hovaness@PANIX.COM(Haig Hovaness) Subject: File 5--Newsday's Encryption and Law Enforcement (Re: CuD 6.19) With all due respect to Professor Denning, I offer the following observations in response to the material in her recent posting. 1. Professor Denning's views are representative of a small minority in the US academic community. However, through her energetic campaign to promote pro-Clipper arguments, a casual observer of the debate would conclude that her position is representative of a substantial segment of academic opinion. This was especially evident in the ACM Communications "dialogue" on Clipper, in which Professor Denning's comments occupied almost half of the editorial space. 2. Professor Denning's efforts to advance her views are not limited to journalistic advocacy and Usenet postings. Her presence on the ACM committee studying Clipper has contributed to the success of the pro-Clipper faction in deadlocking the committee, and thus preventing the largest computing professional society from taking an anti-Clipper position, a position that would reflect the sentiments of the majority of the membership. 3. Professor Denning consistently makes generous assumptions about the proper and lawful actions of government officials - assumptions that anyone familiar with recent American history knows to be naive. For example, the political manipulation of information gathered by J. Edgar Hoover, former Director of the F.B.I. is common knowledge. 4. Professor Denning relies heavily on anecdotal evidence of crimes "prevented" through communications intercepts without presenting accurate data on the (very small) number of crimes in which the intercept was essential to the success of law enforcement. Others have posted the figures, and they suggest that the practical value of such intercepts is greatly overstated. 5. Professor Denning maintains that secure encryption is a difficult technology to master and is not readily available to the general public. In view of the existence of PGP, and the likely availability of its voice-scrambling successor, this is a ludicrous claim. 6. Professor Denning offers no explanation for how a US national standard restricting encryption can be viable in the context of worldwide voice and data communications. How can the US government possibly assert control of information packets crossing US "cyberspace?" 7. Professor Denning omits to mention that polls reveal that the majority of the US public are opposed to telephone wiretaps. All available evidence suggests that Clipper would never survive a public referendum. 8. Professor Denning neglects to mention that the entire commercial sector of the US computing industry is united in opposition to Clipper. Moreover, much of the business community is also hostile to the concept of Government interception of business communications. 9. Professor Denning's arguments are ultimately authoritarian. She believes that the judgement of government officials must carry greater weight than the will of the people. This is a profoundly anti-democratic position. Haig Hovaness Pelham Manor, NY hovaness@panix.com