[1611] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Re: Congress & Crypto Roundup: Vote in Commerce cmte tomorrow
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Eli Brandt)
Wed Sep 24 13:54:22 1997
To: crypto list <cryptography@c2.net>
Date: Wed, 24 Sep 1997 13:07:10 -0400 (EDT)
From: Eli Brandt <eli@gs160.sp.cs.cmu.edu>
In-Reply-To: <199709240329.XAA06229@mail.intercon.com> from "Amanda Walker" at Sep 23, 97 11:29:34 pm
Amanda Walker wrote:
> P.S. Has anyone made the argument that robust encryption is one of the few
> tools that have any hope of countering the "INFOWAR" scenarios that are so
> in vogue inside the Beltway these days? You'd think that the FBI would be
> a major *proponent* of a truly secure data infrastructure, but I guess that's
> pretty idealist at this point.
The point has been made (e.g. in the N-cryptologists' "Risks of Key
Recovery" report) that strong crypto is essential to national security,
but it seems not to have penetrated. The info-war people generally
believe this, but they haven't briefed Congress; the NSA/FBI have...
The NSA's and FBI's counterintelligence components seem to have been
drowned out by law-enforcement and info-vacuuming interests. But I'm
surprised the DOD hasn't gotten involved. Military crypto will presumably
be exempted from the ban, but it can only cover a small part of the
communications infrastructure. Insofar as the DOD cares about civil
defense, it ought to be squaring off against the FBI.
"America's bulwark against a digital Pearl Harbor: transferred DMV clerks?"
--
Eli Brandt | eli+@cs.cmu.edu | http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~eli/
