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- Path: sparky!uunet!cis.ohio-state.edu!magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu!usenet.ins.cwru.edu!agate!agate!phr
- From: phr@soda.berkeley.edu (Paul Rubin)
- Newsgroups: sci.crypt
- Subject: Letter from Stallman et al. regarding DSS
- Date: 18 Aug 92 22:33:56
- Organization: CSUA/UCB
- Lines: 93
- Distribution: world
- Message-ID: <PHR.92Aug18223356@soda.berkeley.edu>
- NNTP-Posting-Host: soda.berkeley.edu
-
- [RMS asked me to post this]
-
- Hon. Tim Valentine
- Chairman, subcommittee on Technology and Competitiveness
- House Committee on Space, Science, and Technology
- U.S. House of Representatives
-
-
- Dear Mr. Valentine:
-
- In a letter sent to your committee on September 20, 1991, James Bidzos,
- President of RSA Data Security Inc., states that the RSA encryption
- algorithm should be used in the NIST's proposed DSS (Digital Signature
- Standard) because it is the de-facto standard for public key
- encryption.
-
- We must inform you that this is not true. The RSA algorithm has not
- become a standard for public key encryption in the United States
- because RSA Inc. has used the various patents covering the algorithm
- to prevent its large-scale use.
-
- [Note added subsequently: RSA responds to this by citing a list of
- companies that have signed agreements to resell RSA software. But
- this is not an indication of widespread use; many dealers is not the
- same thing as many users.]
-
- To make a protocol for communication standard and generally accepted
- requires surmounting a large obstacle: the fact that there is (at
- first) no one else to talk to who speaks the same language. Consider,
- for example, the case of UHF television; at first, no one would buy a
- UHF receiver because there was no broadcasting, and no one would set
- up broadcasting because no one was watching. This obstacle was
- overcome only by explicitly requiring all new TV sets to support UHF
- channels.
-
- Widespread adoption of public key encryption depends on the universal
- availability of software to use it. The most effective way to do this
- is to write a public domain program which everyone can use. Over the
- last decade, several such programs have been written. RSA Inc. has
- squashed each one with accusations of patent infringement.
-
- Bidzos raises concerns about the undue haste in the public comment on
- DSS, and the size of the key it permits. These concerns may be
- valid. Surely they can be addressed by modifying the DSS or its
- adoption process, and are not an argument for switching to RSA. The
- suggestion that NIST might use patents to prevent improvement of DSS
- is also alarming, and NIST [should] take positive steps to allay this
- concern, but such a patent problem is not as bad as the one we know we
- will have using RSA.
-
- The computer industry deserves a public key standard which software
- developers are free to implement. We hope you will make sure the
- eventual standard permits this, by supporting NIST in its rejection of
- the RSA algorithm as long as patents continue to cover it.
-
-
- Sincerely,
-
-
-
- Richard Stallman
- (MacArthur Fellow and ACM award winner)
- 545 Technology Square, room 430
- Cambridge, MA 02139
- (617) 253-8830
-
- and
-
- Patrick H. Winston
- (Director of MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab)
- Marvin Minsky
- (Professor, MIT Media Lab; founder of
- Artificial Intelligence Lab)
- Berthold K.P. Horn
- (Professor, MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab)
- David MacAllester
- (Professor, MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab)
- Hal Abelson
- (Professor, MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab)
- Gerald J. Sussman
- (Professor, MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab)
- Christopher Hanson
- (Research Staff, MIT Math and Computation Project)
- Leonard H. Tower, Jr.
- (Boston University computer services)
- Jerry Cohen
- (Patent Attorney, Perkins, Smith and Cohen)
-
- cc: Members, Subcommittee on Technology and Competitiveness
- Hon. Jack Brooks, Chairman, House Committee on the Judiciary
- Hon. Robert Mosbacher, U.S. Secretary of Commerce
- Dr. Willis H. Ware, RAND Corporation
-
-