Re: Spy Report Imperils Crypto Bills

[Bill Stewart <bill.stewart@pobox.com>]

>Spy Report Imperils Crypto Bills by Declan McCullagh
>12:00 p.m.  25.May.99.PDT WASHINGTON -- A new congressional report claiming
>widespread technological espionage by China will thwart any changes to US
>encryption rules in the near future, a top White House official predicted
Tuesday.
>The conclusions of the 872-page report will probably result in legislators
>tightening export controls instead of relaxing them, White House Chief of
>Staff John Podesta said.

It's tough for a reporter to draw a good balance between objectively reporting
the biased hype that various government officials put out to further
their agendas and getting enough commentary from other different opinions
without editorializing too much about the gameplaying involved -
if you do somewhat too good a job, you lose your access to some sources,
unless you do it astoundingly well.  I'd rather testify in front
of Congress than have to report on them :-)

Exporting crypto was illegal and much more restricted back when this
Chinese agent
allegedly started stealing nuclear secrets than it is today,
especially exporting crypto to Communist Countries.
Yet there's no evidence I've seen in the press that says that the 
US government was cracking any of the Chinese crypto that he may 
have used instead of strong US-written crypto, and during the early years, 
there wasn't much of that in widespread use.  On the contrary,
the court that authorizes wiretaps for national security cases apparently
decided not to authorize wiretapping him.  Any nuclear spy
who doesn't have access to military-grade crypto gear from his
customers is either a pawn being hung out to dry or working for
a customer so technically incompetent that they're more of a threat
to themselves than to the US.   After all, the DES algorithm used
to protect financial data since the 70s was published in the 
Federal Register, and implementations have been available free on the net
for a decade or so, and while technology has caught up with single-DES,
triple-wrapping your data with it gives you more than military strength
and runs fast enough on a $500 computer to be close enough for government
work.

Internationally published telecommunications security consultant
and former Congressional candidate Bill Stewart says it's all a crock.  :-)


>Also speaking at the event was Representative Rick Boucher, a Virginia
>Democrat. He said industry groups should support his legislation that
>covers privacy, digital signatures, and even forged headers on electronic
mail.
>The practice of forging email by connecting to an open mail server -- a
>rite of passage for every computer science freshman and standard operating
>procedure for spammers -- should be punished with hard time in a federal
>penitentiary, Boucher said.
>"We would make it a criminal offense to falsify original information in
>email," Boucher said.

Sigh - Boucher's the seriously dangerous type of legislator -
he's got good intentions, few clues, and thinks he's doing a Good Thing.
If he gets this stuff passed, he'll be accomplishing Bad Things, 
and failing to be successful at the Good Things he wants to achieve.



>To shield consumers from confusion online and spur electronic commerce,
>Boucher said the federal government should order all Web sites to tell
>visitors what is done with personal information they submit. Officials at
>the Federal Trade Commission would enforce the law.
>"All Web sites would have to comply with that simple requirement," he said.

The Federal government should start by identifying all the things
they do with _our_ personal information.


>Boucher also said that Congress should scrutinize cable companies for their
>practice of bundling additional services with high-speed Internet
>connectivity. If the idea catches on, Internet provider start-ups could be
>put out of business, he said.
>"This poses a major problem for the [ISPs].... These are start-up companies
>that didn't exist five years ago."

He also doesn't understand this business very well.


>In response to a question, he said that "there is very little interest"
>among legislators in revisiting antitrust law until the Microsoft case is
>over.

Well, that's good, at least.
				Thanks! 
					Bill
Bill Stewart, bill.stewart@pobox.com
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