Current Shareware 1994 January/SHAR194.ISO/articles/eff603.zip/EFF603.TXT

Text File | 1993-10-21 | 16KB | 403 lines

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EFFector Online Volume 6 No. 3       10/19/1993      [e-mail]
A Publication of the Electronic Frontier Foundation   ISSN 1062-9424

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                        In This Issue:

EFF Changes: New Editor, Suns Move to DC!
Notes from House Hearing on Cryptography Export Controls
Administration Expands FOIA Rights
UK Cryptoprivacy Association Meeting

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EFF Changes: New Editor, Suns Move to DC!

_EFFector_Online_ is now produced by Stanton "Mechanism" McCandlish, EFF's
Online Activist, [e-mail].  Some new formatting: All articles are
separated by the -==-==-==... line you see above, which should make it
convenient to scan forward to a new article quickly.

General comments about _EFFector_, EFF, and the issues raised should be
directed to [e-mail].

Other important addresses, some of which have changed:

[e-mail] - to get on mailing lists, and other tech stuff
[e-mail] - to ask questions about EFF or the issues we are involved in


Our Sun Microsystems SPARCstations have been moved by our former sysadmins,
Helen Rose-Davis and Chris Davis (now with KEI), from Cambridge, MA to
Washington, DC finally!  Our ftp site was unavailable for most of the weekend,
but by Mon. 11/17 was back up again, thanks to Chris, Helen, and the new
EFF System Administrator, Dan Brown ([e-mail]), who had the system up and
running within one hour of it's arrival on-site.  Pretty impressive!

Note that EFF *is* still reachable at eff.org, the ftp site is still
ftp.eff.org, the gopher site is still gopher.eff.org, wais is wais.eff.org,
as always.  However, kragar.eff.org may not be a valid host domain name much
longer, so avoid using it and use ftp.eff.org instead.

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Subject: Notes from House Hearing on Cryptography Export Controls

October 12, 1993
House Foreign Affairs Committee
Subcommittee on Economic Policy, Trade, and the Enviornment
Hearing on mass market cryptography and export controls
Rep. Sam Gejdenson (D-Conn.), Chair

[A hopefully informative and probably biased account of the hearing by EFF]

Committee Members present:

Gejdenson, Cantwell (D-Wash.), Fingerhut (D-Ohio), Rohrbacher (R-Calif.)
Manzullo (R-Ill.)

Witnesses:

PANEL 1 (Open)

J. Hendren, Arkansas Systems (A data security firm that does a lot of
international banking work)

Ray Ozzie, IRIS Associates for Business Software Alliance (Lotus Notes
developer)

Stephen Walker, Trusted Information Systems for Software Publishers Association

Philip Zimmermann, PGP developer

Don Harbert, Digital Eqiupment Corp.

PANEL 2 (Secret Session)

NSA representative


Opening Statement of Gejdenson:

"This hearing is about the well intentioned attempts of the National
Security Agency to try to control the uncontrollable....  The NSA itself
acknowledges that if you have a long distance telephone line and a modem,
you can send this software anywhere in the world.  If you have a computer
and a modem you can take this software off of the Internet anywhere in the
world....  I do not question the value of the information sought by the
National Security Agency.  But once it is determined that the dispersion of
this software cannot be controlled, then however much we might want to
protect our ability to obtain information, it is beyond our means to do so.
 Just as in the case of telecommunications, the National Security Agency is
attempting to put the genie back in the bottle.  It won't happen; and a
vibrant and productive sector of American indsutry may be sacrificed in the
process."

The main points raised by witnesses were these:

1. DES and other strong encryption which is barred by ITAR is in the public
domain and available on the global market from foreign software
manufacturers:

-Ray Ozzie used his laptop and a modem to show how to get a DES
implementation from ftp.germany.eu.net.  The committee loved it and most of
them seemed to understand what was going on on the screen, even though they
had never heard of ftp.

-Stephen Walker described the results of an SPA study which uncovered over
250 cryptography packages which offer DES-based or stronger algorithms.

-Phil Zimmermann testified that he designed PGP from publicly available
information.

2. Foreign DES implementations are just as good as US versions.
Surprisingly enough, this is a contentious issue.  Some members of the
committee seemed to have been told by someone or another that foreign
versions of DES may not be as strong as those that are made in the USA.  If
this were true, then export controls might still be justified despite the
numerous foreign versions of DES on the market.  In my view, this is a
pretty desperate argument.

-Steve Walker demonstrated that all DES works the same way by encrypting a
passage from Mozart's Eine Kleine Nachtmusik with several different foreign
DES packages, and then decrypting them.  Surprise!  They all sounded just
the same.

3. Lots of money is being lost by US software/hardware vendors:

-Don Harbert from DEC told of loses of over $70 Million in just the last
few months.

-BSA estimates that export controls exclude access to a global market the
is $6-9 Billion.

4. People want their privacy

-Phil Zimmermann told the committee about his experience with PGP users and
how badly people need and want to protect their privacy in electronic
environments

Committee Responses:

Overall, the committee was quite sympathetic to the witnesses.  Chairman
Gejdenson seemed very supportive of changing export controls.  Rep. Dana
Rohrbacher, no flaming liberal, said, "the cold war is over.  I sympathize
with everything that has been said here."

...................................................................

Daniel J. Weitzner, Senior Staff Counsel <[e-mail]>
Electronic Frontier Foundation
1001 G St, NW
Suite 950 East
Washington, DC 20001
202-347-5400 (v)
202-393-5509 (f)

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>From ssteele Mon Oct 18 16:29:07 1993
Received: from [192.77.172.156] (ssteele.eff.org) by eff.org with SMTP id
AA18441
  (5.65c/IDA-1.5/ident for <[e-mail]>); Mon, 18 Oct 1993 16:29:07 -0400
Date: Mon, 18 Oct 1993 16:29:07 -0400
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
To: [e-mail]
From: ssteele (Shari Steele)
Subject: articles for EFFector Online
Status: RO

Hi Stanton.
I'd start with an introduction of yourself and how you'll be doing EFFector
Online from now on.

Next, put in an announcement about the successful move of the EFF computers
to DC.  Include a plug for Chris, Helen and Dan, tell what equipment was
moved, and assure folks of how they can still reach us.

I usually just take the headers and footers from the last issue of
EFFector.  Let me know if you don't have a copy of that.
Shari

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Administration Expands FOIA Rights

In an announcement made on Monday, October 4, 1993, President Bill Clinton
has called on all federal departments and agencies "to renew their
commitment to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), to its underlying
principles of government openness, and to its sound administration."

Attorney General Janet Reno specified some changes the Administration will
be making in its enforcement of FOIA.  First, the Department of Justice
will no longer allow agencies the excuse that there MIGHT be a legal basis
for withholding information.  Instead, agencies will be encouraged to
disclose unless there is a clear legal reason that prevents disclosure.
"In short, it shall be the policy of the U.S. Department of Justice to
defend the assertion of a FOIA exemption only in those cases where the
agency reasonably foresees that disclosure would be harmful to an interest
protected by that exemption."

Attorney General Reno also announced that the Department of Justice would
be reviewing regulations implementing FOIA and forms used in the process.
DoJ will also strive to reduce the current FOIA backlogs over the coming
year.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) was especially pleased that
President Clinton refered to enhancing "public access through the use of
electronic information systems."  EFF believes that electronic access to
information is critical, and EFF has been working with Congress (through
support of Senator Patrick Leahy's (D-VT) Electronic FOIA amendments and
other legislation) and members of the Administration to ensure that
electronically stored information is as easily obtainable as printed
documents.  EFF Director of Legal Services Shari Steele commented, "We are
encouraged that the Clinton Administration has recognized the importance of
this method of information dissemination.  In this electronic era, it is
critical that information be made available in a format that is most useful
to citizens as they inquire about the activities of their government."

After over a decade of government whittling away at citizen access to
public information, EFF is pleased to see this shift in priorities.  "We
applaud the Clinton Administration for taking this first step toward
restoring our vital right to access information," Ms. Steele continued,
"and we are hopeful that the Administration will take further steps in this
direction, particularly when it comes to information that is stored
electronically."

A copy of the Administration's memorandum is available for anonymous ftp at
/pub/EFF/legislation/freedom-info-act-10.4.93 on ftp.eff.org.


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UK Cryptoprivacy Association Meeting

Date:  Sunday, 31 October 1993
Time:  1430

At the offices of:

   FOREST
   4th floor
   2 Grosvenor Gardens
   London   SW1W 0DH

[ FOREST is located at the corner of Grosvenor Gardens and Hobart
  Place, a couple of blocks west of Victoria Station. There is a
  taxi shelter across the street from the office. Those who have
  trouble finding this location can page Russell Whitaker on
  081-812-2661, and stand by the payphone or cellphone for a callback. ]

The UK Cryptoprivacy Association has its roots in the U.S. cypherpunk
advocacy of strong personal cryptography.  The next UKCA meeting, to be
held at the offices of FOREST (see the above), will feature roundtable
discussion on such issues as:

    - The recent well-publicised discovery of a larger number of U.S.
        National Security Agency (NSA) electronic listening posts
        than had been previously suspected;
    - Further news on the spread of freely-available public key
        cryptography software in Eastern Europe, Russia, and the
        Transcaucasian states;
    - The status of the various UK and Moscow PGP public key servers and
        software archive sites, with input from a couple of maintainers
        of these services in the UK;
    - The implications of the legal controversy surrounding the
        development and distribution of PGP encryption software in the
        U.S., with further discussion on the possibility of volunteer
        contributions to Phil Zimmermann's legal defence fund;
    - Introduction to public key cryptography for novices

Attendees are encouraged to bring and exchange diskettes with their
PGP public keys.  A few of us will bring along our MS-DOS laptops, to
sign public keys on site.  In the interest of speeding things along, it is
recommended that all keys signed at the meeting be submitted later, with
their newly appended signatures, to the PGP Key Server at Demon
Internet Services.  Send a message with the subject line "help" to
[e-mail], for more information.  PGP (Phil
Zimmermann's "Pretty Good Privacy") public key encryption software can
be obtained by ftp from, among other places, ftp.demon.co.uk in the
directory /pub/pgp.  Versions include, but are not limited to, Unix,
MS-DOS, Archimedes, and MacOS.  Full source code is available.

This meeting will also feature discussion on the upcoming First European
Conference on Computers, Freedom and Privacy (ECFP '93) to be held on
20 November 1993, which will feature speakers including John Gilmore,
David Chaum, and Duncan Frissell, as well as a representative of the
UK's Data Protection Registry.

Russell Earl Whitaker
ECFP Ventures Ltd
[e-mail]

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EFFector Online is published biweekly by:

     Electronic Frontier Foundation
     1001 G Street, N.W., Suite 950 East
     Washington, DC  20001  USA
     Phone:  [phone]  FAX:  [phone]
     Internet Address:  [e-mail]

     Coordination, production and shipping by Shari Steele,
     Director of Legal Services & Community Outreach ([e-mail])

Reproduction of this publication in electronic media is encouraged.  Signed
articles do not necessarily represent the view of the EFF.  To reproduce
signed articles individually, please contact the authors for their express
permission.

*This newsletter is printed on 100% recycled electrons.*

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               -==--==--==-<>-==--==--==-

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         Electronic Frontier Foundation
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--
Stanton McCandlish     Electronic Frontier Foundation Online Activist & SysOp
"A nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood of
ideas in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people." -JFK
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