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UK's Independent on Clipper as published in the Daily Yomiuri [sent by Japanese IPer]
From: David Farber <farber () central cis upenn edu>
Date: Fri, 13 May 1994 07:32:18 -0400
Posted-Date: Fri, 13 May 1994 00:35:31 -0400 from "View from Europe: The Independent", supplement to The Daily Yomiuri, 5/13/94, page 11a: SPOOKS ALL SET TO HACK IT ON THE SUPERHIGHWAY -- Europe fears US plans to let spy agencies monitor electronic mail for criminial content will be open to abuse, writes LEONARD DOYLE A row is brewing between Europe and America over US plans to allow intelligence agencies to monitor information on computer channels. Washington believes E-mail -- electronic messages travelling at the speed of light on the information superhighway -- is a conduit for messages without fear of detection. The US plan for a Clipper chip, which lets intelligence agencies crack encrypted computer messages, has raised fears among European business that sensitive information would no longer be secret if it were vetted by the CIA, the FBI, or GCHQ, the British Government's eavesdropping facility. E-mail is rapidly taking over from "snail-mail," as postal services are dismissively known. There are an estimated 20 million users on the worldwide web of computer networks known as Internet. But in 10 years it is predicted 80 percent of trade information will be sent by this method. The Clinton administration, concerned that terrorists, money-launderers, and drug dealers will use E-mail to send encrypted information to associates, wants to outlaw the use of private encruption on international computer networks. The global censorship plan has run up against opposition from European and American businesses that use encryption to send sensitive information. In a position paper to a committee of European Union intelligence experts, which has been obtained by the Independent, the European organisation representing users of computer security has rejected the Clinton initiative as "totally unacceptable." The statement by the Information Security Business Advisory Group (Ibag) warns European governments to ignore overtures from the US government aimed at restricting access to the information superhighway to users who use encryption that the government agencies can decode. The European position is that "industry needs to know when its sensitive data has been compromised [by the security services or others]" and that the US eavesdropping initiative will greatly reduce the benefits of the information superhighway. Companies "will be restricted to a very restricted list of 'approved' algorithms [encryption methods]" greatly adding to business costs and making international cooperation difficult. Ibag recently informed the senior officials group on information security that the planned US-style restrictions, or the even stricter French system under which those using cyphers must disclose the keys to the authorities, are "totally unacceptable" to industry. The European group has proposed that companies deposit the keys to their encryption cyphers with "trusted third parties" rather than with governments. With this system, when intelligence agencies want to tap messages, the company will have to be notified. Chriss Sund, a computer-security expert, said companies faced real dangers of economic espionage by governments. "There was a general instinct among companies to distrust the French," he said, who he claimed used government controls on encryption "to their advantage." Stephen Dorril, an expert on the intelligence services, claims that the US proposal is designed to facilitate economic espionage. GCHQ, which has been cooperating hand-in-glove with the US for the past 50 years, finds itself caught in the middle of this EU-US dispute. Britain will eventually have to square cooperation on intelligence and encryption across the Atlantic with the demands of its European partners. Under the US initiative, use of computer or voice encruption which cannot readily be hacked into by the secruity services of cooperating governments will be deemed suspcious and worthy of surveillance. These users will be denied access to the information superhighway. The US has decided to replace private encryption with the Clipper chip. This enables government agencies to listen in on conversations and intecept and decode data flows at will. How European governments intend to tackle the problem of terrorists and other criminals using encruption to stay ahead of the law is not known, but there has traditionally been a close working relationship between the National Security Agency in the US and the GCHQ in Britain. The clash over encryption could have serious implications for the development of the information superhighway, which has been hailed in Brussels and Washington as a way of increasing competitivesness and delivering a boost to the economics of the industrialised world. If European businesses are blocked from using the US information superhighway because they will not bow to US pressure, the EU may be forced to develop its own independent system, adding to the cost and hastening the division of the world into three rival trading blocs, the US, the EU, and Asia. Sidebars: * How E-mail helps criminals avoid detection - Today when a user transmits messges in code on the Internet, the international computer network, government intelligence services cannot listen in. - Modern encryption cannot be cracked but if users are forced to use the Clipper chip, intelligence services could then eavesdrop. - The US has introduce the Clipper chip, a way of encrypting messages while allowing government intelligence services access to transmissions. This is possible through a "key" used to encrypt the message. The government holds a duplicate key that allows it to decode transmissions. - Europe is opposed to the Clipper chip because it fears that the FBI or CIA could target European businesses. A suggested alternative is that the "keys" to coded messages should be deposited with a non-government trusted third party. * Dangerous traffic on the information superhighway: - Terrorism - Drug trafficking - Neo-Nazi organisations - Pornography - Industrial espionage - Mondey laundering
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- UK's Independent on Clipper as published in the Daily Yomiuri [sent by Japanese IPer] David Farber (May 13)