90 lines
4.4 KiB
Plaintext
90 lines
4.4 KiB
Plaintext
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New York Times: Monday, February 14, 1994
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Essay
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William Safire
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SINK THE CLIPPER CHIP
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Washington
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Well-meaning law and intelligence officials, vainly seeking to maintain
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their vanishing ability to eavesdrop, have come up with a scheme that
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endangers the personal freedom of every American.
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Nobody doubts that F.B.I. wiretaps help catch crooks or that the National
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Security Agency's "Big Ears" alert us to the plans of terrorists. And
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nobody can deny that new technology makes it easier for the bad guys to
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encode their communications to avoid the eavesdropping of the good guys.
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But the solution that faceless Clinton officials are putting forward shows
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outdated law enforcement rooted in abysmal understanding of the
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information explosion.
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The Clinton notion, recycled from an aborted Bush idea, is to put the same
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encryption chip; in every telephone and computer made in the U.S. This
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new encoding device, or scrambler, would help you and me protect the
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privacy of our conversations and messages and bank accounts from each
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other. That sounds great, but here comes the catch: The Federal
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Government would know and be able to use the code numbers to wiretap each
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of us.
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To the tune of "I Got Algorithm," the Eavesdrop Establishment is singing
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that it will help us protect our privacy --- but not from intrusion by the
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Feds. In effect, its proposal demands we turn over to Washington a
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duplicate set of keys to our homes, formerly our castles, where not even
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the king in olden times could go.
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The "clipper chip" --- aptly named, as it clips the wings of individual
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liberty --- would encode, for Federal perusal whenever a judge rubber-
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stamped a warrant, everything we say on a phone, everything we write on a
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computer, every order we give to a shopping network or bank or 800 or 900
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number, every electronic note we leave our spouses or dictate to our
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personal-digit-assistant genies.
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Add to that stack of intimate date the medical information derived from
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the national "health security card" Mr. Clinton proposes we all carry.
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Combine it with the travel, shopping and credit data available from all
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our plastic cards, along with psychological and student test scores.
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Throw in the confidential tax returns, sealed divorce proceedings, welfare
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records, field investigations for job applications, raw files and C.I.A.
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dossiers available to the Feds, and you have the individual citizen
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standing naked to the nosy bureaucrat.
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Assure us not that our personal life stories will be "safeguarded" by
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multiple escrows in the brave new world of snooperware; we saw only last
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month how political appointees can rifle the old-fashioned files of
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candidates and get off scot-free. Whenever personal information is
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amassed and readily available, it will be examined by the curious, and if
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it is valuable, it will be stolen by political hackers.
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Ah, but wouldn't it be helpful to society to have instant access to the
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encoded communications of a Mafia capo, or a terrorist ordering the
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blow-up of a skyscraper, or a banker financing a dictator's nuclear
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development?
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Sure it would. That's why no self-respecting vice overlord or terrorist
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or local drug-runner would buy or use clipper-chipped American
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telecommunications equipment. They would buy non-American hardware with
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unmonitored Japanese or German or Indian encryption chips and laugh all
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the way to the plutonium factory.
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The only people tap-able by American agents would be honest Americans ---
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or those crooked Americans dopey enough to buy American equipment with the
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pre-compromised American code. Subsequent laws to mandate the F.B.I.
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bug in every transmitter would be as effective as today's laws banning
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radar detectors.
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Tomorrow's law enforcement and espionage cannot be planned by people stuck
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in the wiretap and Big Ear mind-set of the past. The new Ultra secret
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is that the paradigm has shifted; encryption has overcome decryption.
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Billions now spent on passive technical surveillance must be shifted to
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active means of learning criminal or aggressive plans. Human informers
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must be recruited or placed, as "sigint" declines and "humint" rises in
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the new era; psychic as well as monetary rewards for ratting must be
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raised; governments must collude closely to trace transfers of wealth.
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Cash in your clipper chips, wiretappers: you can't detect the crime wave
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of the future with those old earphones on.
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