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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
_________________________________________________________________
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.
_________________________________________________________________
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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