another voice heard from -- from cybercrypt

[David Farber <farber () central cis upenn edu>]

 August 19, 1993                                   FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

 CONTACT:    Simona Nass
             (212) 982-4320 or simona () sea org

             Society for Electronic Access (SEA) Opposes
             Privatization of Digital Signature Standard

 In June, the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST)
 published in the Federal Register its intention to grant an exclusive
 license for nongovernmental use of the Digital Signature Algorithm
 (DSA), a technique developed for NIST by federally-funded researchers.
 DSA can help people authenticate the origin of electronic mail and
 other computerized messages. NIST has proposed making DSA the basis of
 a standard for digital signatures for transactions within federal
 agencies and by anyone doing electronic business with the government
 (and thus, de facto, by anyone else interested in a widely-accepted
 digital-signature standard). Interested parties were given 60 days to
 comment. The SEA has now gone on record opposing this license on three
 grounds:

   1) The law requires an open discussion of whether such an exclusive 
 license serves the interests of both the government and the public
 _before_ the license and its terms are proposed.
 
   2) The proposed license directly contravenes NIST's stated purpose
 in developing DSA in the first place, which was to make a
 digital-signature standard free of encumbrance from privately held
 patent licenses, one that would be available royalty-free worldwide.
 
   3) The proposed license violates federal law governing the granting
 of exclusive licenses. The law states that an exclusive license can
 only be granted for a patent if it can be shown that the technology
 embodied in the patent would not otherwise be developed, brought to
 market and widely used. Considering that NIST's proposed licensee,
 Public Key Partners, is currently engaged in legal action to prevent
 anyone else from developing or marketing digital-signature technology
 in the U.S., they appear to be an unlikely choice to ensure the widest
 possible use of DSA. Indeed, granting an exclusive license to PKP
 would extend their potential legal monopoly on digital signatures
 until 2010.

 Opposition to the NIST/PKP deal has been widespread throughout the
 electronic community. NIST has yet to respond to the SEA's August 9
 filing, or to comments filed by other organizations (a full text of
 the SEA's statement, written by SEA board member Clay Shirky, is
 available via Internet gopher -- reach gopher.panix.com and look under
 Society for Electronic Access (SEA), Telecom Law Information, SEA
 Comment on NIST-PKP Agreement -- or via e-mail by sending a request
 asking for the "SEA Comment on NIST-PKP Agreement" to sea () sea org).

 The Society for Electronic Access is a New York-based organization
 focusing on electronic civil liberties and access issues; for more
 information, e-mail sea-info () sea org; write to The Society for
 Electronic Access, Post Office Box 3131, Church Street Station,
 New York, NY 10008-3131; or call (212) 982-4320.