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   So, people, we have a fight on our hands.

   
   
   In remarks made at the fourth annual conference on Computers, Freedom,
   and Privacy on March 26, Bruce Sterling deconstructs the NSA's
   position on Clipper. His later additions are in italics.
   
   
    By Bruce Sterling
    
   
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   Since I'm the last guy to officially speak at CFP '94, I want to seize
   the chance to grandstand and do a kind of pontifical summation of the
   event. And get some irrepressible feelings off my chest.
   
   What am I going to remember from CFP '94? I'm going to remember the
   chief counsel of the NSA and his impassioned insistence that key
   escrow cryptography represents normality and the status quo and that
   unlicensed hard cryptography is a rash and radical leap into unplumbed
   depths of lawlessness. He made a literary reference to "Brave New
   World". What he said in so many words was, "We're not the Brave New
   World, Clipper's opponents are the Brave New World."
   
   And I believe he meant that. As a professional science fiction writer
   I remember being immediately struck by the deep conviction that there
   was plenty of Brave New World to go around.
   
   I've been to all four CFPs, and in my opinion this is the darkest one
   by far. I hear ancestral voices prophesying war. All previous CFPs had
   a weird kind of camaraderie about them. People from the most disparate
   groups found something useful to tell each other. But now that
   America's premiere spookocracy has arrived on stage and spoken up, I
   think the CFP community has finally found a group of outsiders that it
   cannot metabolize. The trenchworks are going up and I see nothing but
   confrontation ahead.
   
   Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont) at least had the elementary good
   sense to backpedal and temporize, as any politician would upon seeing
   the white-hot volcano of technological advance in the direct path of a
   Cold War glacier that has crushed everything in its way.
   
   But that unlucky flak-catcher the White House sent down here -- that
   guy was mousetrapped, basically. That was a debacle! The White House
   sent a representative to CFP who, in a fatal error of judgment, asked
   the audience whom they feared would abuse cryptography more: the
   American government or criminals? About three quarters of the audience
   voted against the government. He was later quoted as saying that he
   had demanded an extra year of retirement for every minute he stayed in
   the ring at CFP getting pummeled on Clipper. Who was briefing that
   guy? Are they utterly unaware? How on earth could they miss the fact
   that the Clipper Chip and Digital Telephony are violently detested by
   every element in this community -- with the possible exception of one
   brave computer science professor? Dorothy Denning of Georgetown
   University is a noted Clipper proponent -- noted not so much for her
   preeminence in debate as for her being one of the rare figures
   associated with this initiative who is actually willing to address the
   issue publicly at all. Don't they get it that everybody from Rush
   Limbaugh to Timothy Leary despises this initiative? Don't they read
   newspapers? The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times? I won't even
   ask if they read their e-mail.
   
   That was bad politics. But that was nothing compared to the
   presentation by the gentleman from the National Security Agency. If I
   can do it without losing my temper, I want to talk to you a little bit
   about how radically unsatisfactory that was. (For a recap of the NSA
   position, see Stewart Baker's "Don't Worry, Be Happy," Wired 2.06,
   page 100 -Eds.).
   
   I've been waiting a long time for somebody from Fort Meade -- the
   legendary Maryland home of the NSA -- to come to the aid of Dorothy
   Denning in her heroic and heartbreaking solo struggle against the 12
   million other people with e-mail addresses. And I listened very
   carefully and I took notes and -- I swear to God -- I even applauded
   at the end.
   
   He had seven points: four were disingenuous, two were half-truths, and
   the other was the actual core of the problem.
   
   Let me blow away some of the smoke and mirrors first, more for my own
   satisfaction than for the purpose of enlightening you people any. With
   your indulgence.
   
   First, the kidporn thing. I am sick and tired of hearing this specious
   blackwash. Are American citizens really so neurotically uptight about
   deviant sexual behavior that we will allow our entire information
   infrastructure to be dictated by the existence of pedophiles? Are
   pedophiles that precious and important to us? Do the NSA and the FBI
   really believe that they can hide the structure of a telephone switch
   under a layer of camouflage called "child pornography"? Are we
   supposed to flinch so violently at the specter of child abuse that we
   somehow miss the fact that they're installing a Sony Walkman jack in
   our phones?
   
   Look, there were pedophiles before the National Information
   Infrastructure and there will be pedophiles long after NII is just
   another dead acronym. Pedophiles don't jump out of BBSes like
   jack-in-the-boxes. You want to impress me with your deep concern for
   children? This is Chicago! Go down to the projects and rescue some
   children from being terrorized and recruited by crack gangs who
   wouldn't know a modem if it bit them on the ass! Stop pornkidding us
   around! Just knock it off with that crap, you're embarrassing
   yourselves.
   
   But back to the speech by Mr. Baker of the NSA. Was it just me, ladies
   and gentlemen, or did anyone else catch that tone of truly intolerable
   arrogance? Did the guy have to make the remark about our having missed
   Woodstock because we were busy with our trigonometry? Do spook
   mathematicians -- permanently cooped up inside Fort Meade -- consider
   that a funny remark? I'd like to make an even more amusing observation
   -- that I've seen scarier secret police agencies than his completely
   destroyed by one Czech hippie playwright with a manual typewriter.
   
   Are people within the NSA unaware that the current President of the US
   once had a big bushel-basketful of hair? If they are, perhaps I can
   sell them my lapel button featuring a spectacularly hirsute Bill
   Clinton circa 1969 with the legend "My President." What does he expect
   from the computer community? Normality? Sorry, pal -- we're fresh out!
   Who is it, exactly, that the NSA considers a level-headed, sober sort,
   someone to sit down with and talk to seriously? Jobs? Wozniak? Gates?
   Sculley? Perot? I hope to God it's not Perot. Bob Allen? OK, maybe Bob
   Allen, that brownshoe guy from AT&T. Bob Allen seems to think that
   Clipper is a swell idea, at least he's somehow willing to merchandise
   it. Even though AT&T has, mysteriously, signed off on the Electronic
   Frontier Foundation's industrywide petition against Clipper. But
   Christ, Bob Allen just gave eight zillion dollars to a guy whose idea
   of a good time is Microsoft Windows for Spaceships also known as
   Teledesic, funded by Bill Gates and Craig McCaw.
   
   When is the NSA going to realize that Kapor and his people (Electronic
   Frontier Foundation) and Rotenberg and his people (Computer
   Professionals for Social Responsibility) and the rest of the people
   here are as good as they get in this milieu? CFP includes people from
   just about every interest group in the world that knows and cares what
   a modem is. Yes, they are weird, and yes, they have weird friends (I'm
   one of them), but there isn't any normality left in this society, and
   when it comes to computers, when the going got weird the weird turned
   pro! The status quo is over! Wake up to it! Get used to it!
   
   Where in hell does a crowd of spooks from Fort Meade get off playing
   "responsible adults" in this situation? This is a laugh and a half!
   Bobby Ray Inman, the legendary NSA leader, made a stab at computer
   entrepreneurism and rapidly sank with all hands. Then he got out of
   the shadows of espionage and into the bright lights of actual public
   service and immediately started gabbling like a daylight-stricken
   vampire. Is this the kind of responsive public official we're expected
   to trust blindly with the insides of our phones and computers? Who
   made him God? Harry Truman, apparently. By executive order. In the
   frenzy of McCarthyism that created the NSA.
   
   You know, it's a difficult confession for a practiced cynic like me to
   make, but I actually trust EFF people. I do; I trust them. There, I've
   said it. But I wouldn't trust Bobby Ray Inman to go down to the corner
   store for a pack of cigarettes.
   
   You know, I like FBI people. I even kind of trust them, sort of, kind
   of, a little bit. I'm sorry that they didn't catch Kevin Mitnick here.
   Rumors flew at CFP that Mitnick, a legendary computer intruder and
   phone phreak, was in attendance. A young attendee who reportedly
   resembled Mitnick was detained in handcuffs and fingerprinted at
   Chicago FBI headquarters. I'm even sorry that they didn't apprehend
   Robert Steele, who is about 100 times as smart as Mitnick and 10,000
   times as dangerous.
   
   Intelligence expert and underground hacker devotee Robert Steele was
   mistaken by FBI agents for sometime Mitnick accomplice, "Agent Steal."
   Steele was rousted from his CFP hotel bed by three FBI agents
   unsuccessfully pretending to be room service. When the agents saw
   that, unlike the actual "Agent Steal," Robert Steele does not possess
   an artificial leg, Steele was left in peace. Yet a third CFP attendee
   was accused by FBI agents, reportedly, of some nebulous involvement
   with the World Trade Center bombing. One would think that any
   connection, however tenuous, between Islamic zealot truck bombers and
   American hackers would be a cause for grave national alarm, but there
   has not been another peep from the FBI about this subject. CFP '94 was
   quite a busy event for the FBI.
   
   But FBI people, I think your idea of Digital Telephony is a scarcely
   mitigated disaster, and I'll tell you why: because you're going to be
   filling out your paperwork in quintuplicate to get a tap, just like
   you always do, because you don't have your own pet court like the NSA
   does. And for you, it probably is going to seem pretty much like the
   status quo. But in the meantime, you will have armed the enemies of
   the United States around the world with a terrible weapon. Not your
   court-ordered, civilized Digital Telephony -- their raw and tyrannical
   Digital Telephony.
   
   You're gonna be using it to round up wise guys in street gangs, and
   people like Saddam Hussein are gonna be using it to round up
   democratic activists and national minorities. You're going to
   strengthen the hand of despotism around the world, and then you're
   going to have to deal with the hordes of state-supported truck bombers
   these rogue governments are sending our way after annihilating their
   own internal opposition by using your tools. You want us to put an ax
   in your hand and you're promising to hit us with only the flat side of
   it. But the Chinese don't see it that way; they're already licensing
   fax machines and they're gonna need a lot of new hardware to gear up
   for Tiananmen II.
   
   I've talked a long time, but I want to finish by saying something
   about the NSA guy're
   NSA and I do somehow convince you, by some fluke, then I urge you to
   look at your conscience -- I know you have one -- and take the word to
   your superiors, and if they don't agree with you -- resign. Leave the
   agency. If I'm right about what's coming down the line, you'll be glad
   you didn't wait.
   
   But even though I have a good line of gab, I don't expect to argue
   people out of their livelihood. That's notoriously difficult.
   
   So CFP people, you have a fight on your hands. I'm sorry that a
   community this young should have to face a fight this savage, for such
   terribly high stakes, so soon. But what the heck; you're always
   bragging about how clever you are; here's your chance to prove to your
   fellow citizens that you're more than a crowd of Net-nattering Mensa
   dilettantes. In cyberspace one year is like seven dog years, and on
   the Internet nobody can tell you're a dog, so I figure that makes you
   CFP people 28 years old. And people, for the sake of our society and
   our children you had better learn to act your age.
   
   
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    Bruce Sterling (bruce @well.sf.ca.us) is a Wired contributor and
    author of four science fiction novels and the nonfiction "The Hacker
    Crackdown."
    
   
   
   
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