Shareware Overload Trio 2/Shareware Overload Trio Volume 2 (Chestnut CD-ROM).ISO/dir33/clipperc.zip/CLIPPER.TXT

Text File | 1994-03-11 | 32KB | 659 lines

   Volume  3.04                                February 15, 1994
   -------------------------------------------------------------

                           Published by
           Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility
                         Washington Office
                     ([e-mail])

                SPECIAL EDITION --- CLIPPER UPDATE
     -------------------------------------------------------------

Contents

    [1] Clipper Petition Tops 10,000 Mark
    [2] Safire Slams Clipper
    [3] A Tough Question
    [4] Clipper Facts: Definition of "Tesserea"
    [5] Sign the Clipper Petition!
    [6] New Files at the CPSR Internet Library


-------------------------------------------------------------

[1] Clipper Petition Tops 10,000 Mark

The electronic petition begun by CPSR to oppose Clipper has generated
 well over 10,000 responses in two weeks.  The daily signature totals
 continue to increase, currently running at almost 2,000 per day!

The number of people who have opposed Clipper already exceeds the
 current estimated government orders for Clipper chips.

Other upcoming milestones:

   12,000  Number of computer networks connected to the Internet
   15,000  Estimated number of total lawful wiretaps, 1968-1994
   70,000  Anticipated number of Clipper purchases this year

More details on the petition are re-printed below, just in case you
 haven't already forwarded a copy to every person and mailing list you
 know.

     -------------------------------------------------------------

[2] Safire Slams Clipper

For those of you who might have missed it, William Safire published a
 very good essay on the Clipper proposal yesterday (February 14). We're
 providing some excerpts here and recommend the piece in its entirety.
 Let's hope Safire can do for Clipper what he did for Bobby Inman.


  Well-meaning law and intelligence officials, vainly seeking to
  maintain their vanishing ability to eavesdrop, have come up with
  a scheme that endangers the personal freedom of every American.

            *     *     *

  The "clipper chip" --- aptly named, as it clips the wings of
  individual liberty --- would encode, for Federal perusal whenever a
  judge rubber-stamped a warrant, everything we say on a phone,
  everything we write on a computer, every order we give to a shopping
  network or bank or 800 or 900 number, every electronic note we leave
  our spouses or dictate to our personal-digit-assistant genies.

  Add to that stack of intimate data the medical information derived
  from the national "health security card" Mr. Clinton proposes we all
  carry. Combine it with the travel, shopping and credit data available
  from all our plastic cards, along with psychological and student test
  scores. Throw in the confidential tax returns, sealed divorce
  proceedings, welfare records, field investigations for job
  applications, raw files and C.I.A. dossiers available to the Feds, and
  you have the individual citizen standing naked to the nosy bureaucrat.

            *     *     *

  The only people tap-able by American agents would be honest Americans
  --- or those crooked Americans dopey enough to buy American equipment
  with the pre-compromised American code.  Subsequent laws to mandate the
  F.B.I. bug in every transmitter would be as effective as today's laws
  banning radar detectors.

            *     *     *

  Cash in your clipper chips, wiretappers:  you can't detect the crime
  wave of the future with those old earphones on.

     ---------------------------------------------------------------

[3] A Tough Question

During the briefing on February 4 at which the formal adoption of the
 Escrowed Encryption Standard (aka Clipper) was announced, Mark Richards,
 Deputy Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division,   was asked
 the following hypothetical question:

  Suppose NSA goes to the key escrow agents and says, "We intercepted
  a Clipper-encrypted communication overseas.  No U.S. persons
  were parties, so the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act does
  not apply and we don't need a warrant."  How do the escrow
  agents determine whether or not to provide the keys?  Doesn't
  this create a huge loophole in the system?

Richards' response was that there would be "some" mechanism developed to
 ensure that there would be no abuse of the key escrow system, but added
 that any such procedures "might not be made public."  The response was
 less than assuring.  The development of secret procedures for foreign
 intelligence use of escrowed keys does nothing to assure the public of
 the system's integrity.  It creates a very real possibility that the key
 escrow system will be based upon nothing more than NSA's unilateral
 representations concerning the circumstances of a particular
 interception.

It was not at all apparent why these procedures couldn't be made public.
 Like so much of the Clipper proposal, valid concerns are met with the
 claim that "national security" precludes the disclosure of relevant
 information.  This is why many of us believe this is a dangerous and
 ill-advised way to design our civilian communications infrastructure.

     ---------------------------------------------------------------

[4] Clipper Facts: Definition of "Tesserea"

The Defense Department reportedly plans to employ the Clipper technology
 in a device known as a "Tessera Card."  We checked the dictionary and
 found the results to be kind of frightening:

  Terrerea n. Lat. (pl. tessereae).  Literally, "four-cornered".  Used
  to refer to four-legged tables, chairs, stools, etc.  Also, a single
  piece of mosaic tile; a single piece of a mosaic.  _Pol._: An identity
  chit or marker.  Tessereae were forced on conquered peoples and
  domestic slaves by their Roman occupiers or owners.  Slaves or Gauls
  who refused to accept a tesserea were branded or maimed as a form of
  identification.


>From Starr's History of the Classical World and the Oxford Unabridged.
 (thanks to Clark Matthews)

     ----------------------------------------------------------------

[5] Sign the Clipper Petition!

                Electronic Petition to Oppose Clipper
                      *Please Distribute Widely*

On January 24, many of the nation's leading experts in cryptography and
 computer security wrote President Clinton and asked him to withdraw the
 Clipper proposal.

The public response to the letter has been extremely favorable,
 including coverage in the New York Times and numerous computer and
 security trade magazines.

Many people have expressed interest in adding their names to the letter.
 In  response to these requests, CPSR is organizing an Internet petition
 drive to oppose the Clipper proposal.  We will deliver the signed
 petition to the White House, complete with the names of all the people
 who oppose Clipper.

To sign on to the letter, send a message to:

     [e-mail]

with the message "I oppose Clipper" (no quotes)

You will receive a return message confirming your vote.

Please distribute this announcement so that others may also express
 their opposition to the Clipper proposal.

     -------------------------------------------------------------

[6] New Files at the CPSR Internet Library

The following Clipper-related files are now available at the CPSR
 Internet Library:

  NIST Announcement of FIPS-185 (Escrowed Encryption Standard)
  /cpsr/privacy/crypto/clipper/fips_185_clipper_feb_1994.txt

  "Big Brother Inside" Postscript file parody of Intel's logo.
  Perfect for stickers, posters. Designed by Matt Thomlinson.
  /cpsr/privacy/crypto/clipper/big_brother_inside_sticker.ps

  All February 4 White House releases on Clipper are available at
  /cpsr/privacy/crypto/clipper

  An analysis of US cryptography policy by Professor Lance Hoffman
  commissioned by NIST /cpsr/privacy/crypto/hoffman_crypto_policy_1994


The CPSR Internet Library is a free service available via
 FTP/WAIS/Gopher/listserv from cpsr.org:/cpsr.  Materials from Privacy
 International, the Taxpayers Assets Project and the Cypherpunks are also
 archived.  For more information, contact [e-mail].

=======================================================================

To subscribe to the Alert, send the message:

"subscribe cpsr-announce <your name>" (without quotes or brackets) to
 [e-mail].  Back issues of the Alert are available at the CPSR
 Internet Library FTP/WAIS/Gopher cpsr.org /cpsr/alert

Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility is a national,
 non-partisan, public-interest organization dedicated to understanding
 and directing the impact of computers on society.  Founded in 1981, CPSR
 has 2000 members from all over the world and 22 chapters across the
 country.  Our National Advisory Board includes a Nobel laureate and
 three winners of the Turing Award, the highest honor in computer
 science.  Membership is open to everyone.

For more information, please contact: [e-mail] or visit the CPSR
 discussion conferences on The Well (well.sf.ca.us) or Mindvox
 (phantom.com).

 ------------------------ END CPSR Alert 3.04 -----------------------

 =-=-=-=-=-=-Copyright 1993,4 Wired USA Ltd.  All Rights Reserved=-=-=-=-=-=
 -=-=For complete copyright information, please see the end of this file=-=-
 =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

WIRED 2.04
 Electrosphere

Jackboots on the Infobahn
 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Clipper is a last ditch attempt by the United States, the last great power
 from the old Industrial Era, to establish imperial control over cyberspace.

By John Perry Barlow


[Note: The following article will appear in the April 1994 issue of WIRED.
 We, the editors of WIRED, are net-casting it now in its pre-published form
 as a public service. Because of the vital and urgent nature of its message,
 we believe readers on the Net should hear and take action now. You are free
 to pass this article on electronically; in fact we urge you to replicate it
 throughout the net with our blessings. If you do, please keep the copyright
 statements and this note intact. For a complete listing of Clipper-related
 resources available through WIRED Online, send email to <[e-mail]>
 with the following message: "send clipper.index". - The Editors of WIRED]

On January 11, I managed to schmooze myself aboard Air Force 2. It was
 flying out of LA, where its principal passenger had just outlined his
 vision of the information superhighway to a suited mob of television, show-
 biz, and cable types who  fervently hoped to own it one day - if they could
 ever figure out what the hell it was.

>From the standpoint of the Electronic Frontier Foundation the speech had
 been wildly encouraging. The administration's program, as announced by Vice
 President Al Gore, incorporated many of the concepts of open competition,
 universal access, and  deregulated common carriage that we'd been pushing
 for the previous year.

But he had said nothing about the future of privacy, except to cite among
 the bounties of the NII its ability to "help law enforcement agencies
 thwart criminals and terrorists who might use advanced telecommunications
 to commit crimes."

On the plane I asked Gore what this implied about administration policy on
 cryptography. He became as noncommittal as a cigar-store Indian. "We'll be
 making some announcements.... I can't tell you anything more." He hurried
 to the front of the  plane, leaving me to troubled speculation.

Despite its fundamental role in assuring privacy, transaction security, and
 reliable identity within the NII, the Clinton administration has not
 demonstrated an enlightenment about cryptography up to par with the rest of
 its digital vision.

The Clipper Chip - which threatens to be either the goofiest waste of
 federal dollars since President Gerald Ford's great Swine Flu program or,
 if actually deployed, a surveillance technology of profound malignancy -
 seemed at first an ugly legacy  of the Reagan-Bush modus operandi. "This is
 going to be our Bay of Pigs," one Clinton White House official told me at
 the time Clipper was introduced, referring to the disastrous plan to invade
 Cuba that Kennedy inherited from Eisenhower.

(Clipper, in case you're just tuning in, is an encryption chip that the
 National Security Agency and FBI hope will someday be in every phone and
 computer in America. It scrambles your communications, making them
 unintelligible to all but their  intended recipients. All, that is, but the
 government, which would hold the "key" to your chip. The key would
 separated into two pieces, held in escrow, and joined with the appropriate
 "legal authority.")

Of course, trusting the government with your privacy is like having a
 Peeping Tom install your window blinds. And, since the folks I've met in
 this White House seem like extremely smart, conscious freedom-lovers -
 hell, a lot of them are Deadheads -  I was sure that after they were fully
 moved in, they'd face down the National Security Agency and the FBI, let
 Clipper die a natural death, and lower the export embargo on reliable
 encryption products.

Furthermore, the National Institutes of Standards and Technology and the
 National Security Council have been studying both Clipper and export
 embargoes since April. Given that the volumes of expert testimony they had
 collected overwhelmingly opposed  both, I expected the final report would
 give the administration all the support it needed to do the right thing.

I was wrong. Instead, there would be no report. Apparently, they couldn't
 draft one that supported, on the evidence, what they had decided to do
 instead.


THE OTHER SHOE DROPS

On Friday, February 4, the other jackboot dropped. A series of
 announcements from the administration made it clear that cryptography would
 become their very own "Bosnia of telecommunications" (as one staffer put
 it). It wasn't just that the old  Serbs in the National Security Agency and
 the FBI were still making the calls. The alarming new reality was that the
 invertebrates in the White House were only too happy to abide by them.
 Anything to avoid appearing soft on drugs or terrorism.

So, rather than ditching Clipper, they declared it a Federal Data
 Processing Standard, backing that up with an immediate government order for
 50,000 Clipper devices. They appointed the National Institutes of Standards
 and Technology and the  Department of Treasury as the "trusted" third
 parties that would hold the Clipper key pairs. (Treasury, by the way, is
 also home to such trustworthy agencies as the Secret Service and the Bureau
 of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms.)

They reaffirmed the export embargo on robust encryption products, admitting
 for the first time that its purpose was to stifle competition to Clipper.
 And they outlined a very porous set of requirements under which the cops
 might get the keys to your  chip. (They would not go into the procedure by
 which the National Security Agency could get them, though they assured us
 it was sufficient.)

They even signaled the impending return of the dread Digital Telephony, an
 FBI legislative initiative requiring fundamental reengineering of the
 information infrastructure; providing wiretapping ability to the FBI would
 then become the paramount  design priority.


INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS

Actually, by the time the announcements thudded down, I wasn't surprised by
 them. I had spent several days the previous week in and around the White
 House.

I felt like I was in another remake of The Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
 My friends in the administration had been transformed. They'd been subsumed
 by the vast mindfield on the other side of the security clearance membrane,
 where dwell the  monstrous bureaucratic organisms that feed on fear. They'd
 been infected by the institutionally paranoid National Security Agency's
 Weltanschauung.

They used all the telltale phrases. Mike Nelson, the White House point man
 on the NII, told me, "If only I could tell you what I know, you'd feel the
 same way I do." I told him I'd been inoculated against that argument during
 Vietnam. (And it does  seem to me that if you're going to initiate a
 process that might end freedom in America, you probably need an argument
 that isn't classified.)

Besides, how does he know what he knows? Where does he get his information?
 Why, the National Security Agency, of course. Which, given its strong
 interest in the outcome, seems hardly an unimpeachable source.

However they reached it, Clinton and Gore have an astonishingly simple
 bottom line, to which even the future of American liberty and prosperity is
 secondary: They believe that it is their responsibility to eliminate, by
 whatever means, the  possibility that some terrorist might get a nuke and
 use it on, say, the World Trade Center. They have been convinced that such
 plots are more likely to ripen to hideous fruition behind a shield of
 encryption.

The staffers I talked to were unmoved by the argument that anyone smart
 enough to steal a nuclear device is probably smart enough to use PGP or
 some other uncompromised crypto standard. And never mind that the last
 people who popped a hooter in the  World Trade Center were able to get it
 there without using any cryptography and while under FBI surveillance.

We are dealing with religion here. Though only ten American lives have been
 lost to terrorism in the last two years, the primacy of this threat has
 become as much an article of faith with these guys as the Catholic
 conviction that human life begins  at conception or the Mormon belief that
 the Lost Tribe of Israel crossed the Atlantic in submarines.

In the spirit of openness and compromise, they invited the Electronic
 Frontier Foundation to submit other solutions to the "problem" of the
 nuclear-enabled terrorist than key escrow devices, but they would not admit
 into discussion the argument that  such a threat might, in fact, be some
 kind of phantasm created by the spooks to ensure their lavish budgets into
 the post-Cold War era.

As to the possibility that good old-fashioned investigative techniques
 might be more valuable in preventing their show-case catastrophe (as it was
 after the fact in finding the alleged perpetrators of the last attack on
 the World Trade Center), they  just hunkered down and said that when
 wiretaps were necessary, they were damned well necessary.

When I asked about the business that American companies lose because of
 their inability to export good encryption products, one staffer essentially
 dismissed the market, saying that total world trade in crypto goods was
 still less than a billion  dollars. (Well, right. Thanks more to the
 diligent efforts of the National Security Agency than to dim sales
 potential.)

I suggested that a more immediate and costly real-world effect of their
 policies would be to reduce national security by isolating American
 commerce, owing to a lack of international confidence in the security of
 our data lines. I said that Bruce  Sterling's fictional data-enclaves in
 places like the Turks and Caicos Islands were starting to look real-world
 inevitable.

They had a couple of answers to this, one unsatisfying and the other scary.
 The unsatisfying answer was that the international banking community could
 just go on using DES, which still seemed robust enough to them. (DES is the
 old federal Data  Encryption Standard, thought by most cryptologists to be
 nearing the end of its credibility.)

More frightening was their willingness to counter the data-enclave future
 with one in which no data channels anywhere would be secure from
 examination by one government or another. Pointing to unnamed other
 countries that were developing their own  mandatory standards and
 restrictions regarding cryptography, they said words to the effect of,
 "Hey, it's not like you can't outlaw the stuff. Look at France."

Of course, they have also said repeatedly - and for now I believe them -
 that they have absolutely no plans to outlaw non-Clipper crypto in the US.
 But that doesn't mean that such plans wouldn't develop in the presence of
 some pending "emergency."  Then there is that White House briefing
 document, issued at the time Clipper was first announced, which asserts
 that no US citizen "as a matter of right, is entitled to an unbreakable
 commercial encryption product."

Now why, if it's an ability they have no intention of contesting, do they
 feel compelled to declare that it's not a right? Could it be that they are
 preparing us for the laws they'll pass after some bearded fanatic has
 gotten himself a surplus nuke  and used something besides Clipper to
 conceal his plans for it?

If they are thinking about such an eventuality, we should be doing so as
 well. How will we respond? I believe there is a strong, though currently
 untested, argument that outlawing unregulated crypto would violate the
 First Amendment, which surely  protects the manner of our speech as clearly
 as it protects the content.

But of course the First Amendment is, like the rest of the Constitution,
 only as good as the government's willingness to uphold it. And they are, as
 I say, in the mood to protect our safety over our liberty.

This is not a mind-frame against which any argument is going to be very
 effective. And it appeared that they had already heard and rejected every
 argument I could possibly offer.

In fact, when I drew what I thought was an original comparison between
 their stand against naturally proliferating crypto and the folly of King
 Canute (who placed his throne on the beach and commanded the tide to leave
 him dry), my government  opposition looked pained and said he had heard
 that one almost as often as jokes about roadkill on the information
 superhighway.

I hate to go to war with them. War is always nastier among friends.
 Furthermore, unless they've decided to let the National Security Agency
 design the rest of the National Information Infrastructure as well, we need
 to go on working closely with  them on the whole range of issues like
 access, competition, workplace privacy, common carriage, intellectual
 property, and such. Besides, the proliferation of strong crypto will
 probably happen eventually no matter what they do.

But then again, it might not. In which case we could shortly find ourselves
 under a government that would have the automated ability to log the time,
 origin and recipient of every call we made, could track our physical
 whereabouts continuously,  could keep better account of our financial
 transactions than we do, and all without a warrant. Talk about crime
 prevention!

Worse, under some vaguely defined and surely mutable "legal authority,"
 they also would be able to listen to our calls and read our e-mail without
 having to do any backyard rewiring. They wouldn't need any permission at
 all to monitor overseas calls.

If there's going to be a fight, I'd rather it be with this government than
 the one we'd likely face on that hard day.

Hey, I've never been a paranoid before. It's always seemed to me that most
 governments are too incompetent to keep a good plot strung together all the
 way from coffee break to quitting time. But I am now very nervous about the
 government of the  United States of America.

Because Bill 'n' Al, whatever their other new-paradigm virtues, have
 allowed the very old-paradigm trogs of the Guardian Class to define as
 their highest duty the defense of America against an enemy that exists
 primarily in the imagination - and is  therefore capable of anything.

To assure absolute safety against such an enemy, there is no limit to the
 liberties we will eventually be asked to sacrifice. And, with a Clipper
 Chip in every phone, there will certainly be no technical limit on their
 ability to enforce those  sacrifices.


WHAT YOU CAN DO

GET CONGRESS TO LIFT THE CRYPTO EMBARGO

The administration is trying to impose Clipper on us by manipulating market
 forces. By purchasing massive numbers of Clipper devices, they intend to
 induce an economy of scale which will make them cheap while the export
 embargo renders all  competition either expensive or nonexistent.

We have to use the market to fight back. While it's unlikely that they'll
 back down on Clipper deployment, the Electronic Frontier Foundation
 believes that with sufficient public involvement, we can get Congress to
 eliminate the export embargo.

Rep. Maria Cantwell, D-Washington, has a bill (H.R. 3627) before the
 Economic Policy, Trade, and Environment Subcommittee of the House Committee
 on Foreign Affairs that would do exactly that. She will need a lot of help
 from the public. They may not  care much about your privacy in DC, but they
 still care about your vote.

Please signal your support of H.R. 3627, either by writing her directly or
 e-mailing her at [e-mail]. Messages sent to that address will be
 printed out and delivered to her office. In the subject header of your
 message, please include the  words "support HR 3627." In the body of your
 message, express your reasons for supporting the bill. You may also express
 your sentiments to Rep. Lee Hamilton, D-Indiana, the House Committee on
 Foreign Affairs chair, by e-mailing [e-mail].

Furthermore, since there is nothing quite as powerful as a letter from a
 constituent, you should check the following list of subcommittee and
 committee members to see if your congressional representative is among
 them. If so, please copy them your  letter to Rep. Cantwell.

> Economic Policy, Trade, and Environment Subcommittee:

Democrats: Sam Gejdenson (Chair), D-Connecticut; James Oberstar, D-
 Minnesota; Cynthia McKinney, D-Georgia; Maria Cantwell, D-Washington; Eric
 Fingerhut, D-Ohio; Albert R. Wynn, D-Maryland; Harry Johnston, D-Florida;
 Eliot Engel, D-New York; Charles Schumer, D-New York.

Republicans: Toby Roth (ranking), R-Wisconsin; Donald Manzullo, R-Illinois;
 Doug Bereuter, R-Nebraska; Jan Meyers, R-Kansas; Cass Ballenger, R-North
 Carolina; Dana Rohrabacher, R-California.

> House Committee on Foreign Affairs:

Democrats: Lee Hamilton (Chair), D-Indiana; Tom Lantos, D-California;
 Robert Torricelli, D-New Jersey; Howard Berman, D-California; Gary
 Ackerman, D-New York; Eni Faleomavaega, D-Somoa; Matthew Martinez, D-
 California; Robert Borski, D-Pennsylvania;  Donal Payne, D-New Jersey;
 Robert Andrews, D-New Jersey; Robert Menendez, D-New Jersey; Sherrod Brown,
 D-Ohio; Alcee Hastings, D-Florida; Peter Deutsch, D-Florida; Don Edwards,
 D-California; Frank McCloskey, D-Indiana; Thomas Sawyer, D-Ohio; Luis
 Gutierrez, D-Illinois.

Republicans: Benjamin Gilman (ranking), R-New York; William Goodling, R-
 Pennsylvania; Jim Leach, R-Iowa; Olympia Snowe, R-Maine; Henry Hyde, R-
 Illinois; Christopher Smith, R-New Jersey; Dan Burton, R-Indiana; Elton
 Gallegly, R-California; Ileana  Ros-Lehtinen, R-Florida; David Levy, R-New
 York; Lincoln Diaz-Balart, R-Florida; Ed Royce, R-California.


BOYCOTT CLIPPER DEVICES AND THE COMPANIES WHICH MAKE THEM.

Don't buy anything with a Clipper Chip in it. Don't buy any product from a
 company that manufactures devices with Big Brother inside. It is likely
 that the government will ask you to use Clipper for communications with the
 IRS or when doing business  with federal agencies. They cannot, as yet,
 require you to do so. Just say no.


LEARN ABOUT ENCRYPTION AND EXPLAIN THE ISSUES TO YOUR UNWIRED FRIENDS

The administration is banking on the likelihood that this stuff is too
 technically obscure to agitate anyone but nerds like us. Prove them wrong
 by patiently explaining what's going on to all the people you know who have
 never touched a computer and  glaze over at the mention of words like
 "cryptography."

Maybe you glaze over yourself. Don't. It's not that hard. For some hands-on
 experience, download a copy of PGP - Pretty Good Privacy - a shareware
 encryption engine which uses the robust RSA encryption algorithm. And learn
 to use it.


GET YOUR COMPANY TO THINK ABOUT EMBEDDING REAL CRYPTOGRAPHY IN ITS PRODUCTS

If you work for a company that makes software, computer hardware, or any
 kind of communications device, work from within to get them to incorporate
 RSA or some other strong encryption scheme into their products. If they say
 that they are afraid to  violate the export embargo, ask them to consider
 manufacturing such products overseas and importing them back into the
 United States. There appears to be no law against that. Yet.

You might also lobby your company to join the Digital Privacy and Security
 Working Group, a coalition of companies and public interest groups -
 including IBM, Apple, Sun, Microsoft, and, interestingly, Clipper phone
 manufacturer AT&T - that is  working to get the embargo lifted.


ENLIST!

Self-serving as it sounds coming from me, you can do a lot to help by
 becoming a member of one of these organizations. In addition to giving you
 access to the latest information on this subject, every additional member
 strengthens our credibility  with Congress.

> Join the Electronic Frontier Foundation by writing [e-mail].

> Join Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility by e-mailing
 cpsr.info@cpsr

org. CPSR is also organizing a protest, to which you can lend your support
 by sending e-mail to [e-mail] with "I oppose Clipper" in
 the message body. Ftp/gopher/WAIS to cpsr.org /cpsr/privacy/

crypto/clipper for more info.


In his LA speech, Gore called the development of the NII "a revolution."
 And it is a revolutionary war we are engaged in here. Clipper is a last
 ditch attempt by the United States, the last great power from the old
 Industrial Era, to establish  imperial control over cyberspace. If they
 win, the most liberating development in the history of humankind could
 become, instead, the surveillance system which will monitor our
 grandchildren's morality. We can be better ancestors than that.

San Francisco, California

Wednesday, February 9, 1994

                                   * * *

John Perry Barlow ([e-mail]) is co-founder and Vice-Chairman of the
 Electronic Frontier Foundation, a group which defends liberty, both in
 Cyberspace and the Physical World. He has three daughters.


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           Copyright 1993,4 Wired USA Ltd.  All rights reserved.

  This article may be redistributed provided that the article and this
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To everyone besides Bryan, his request came first so I cc'd to the rest to
expedite.  I've really had a lot more requests than I anticipated.

NEil @ MLI




=END=