IP: Muckraker Dead Man Walking by Meeks

[Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>]

From: Muckraker        


As the Commerce Department's undersecretary for export administration,
William Reinsch is charged with overseeing the White House's new encryption
program, dubbed the Key Recovery Access Policy - better known by its
stunningly apt acronym, KRAP. 


Reinsch is a veteran political insider. He spent 20 years on Capitol Hill
serving a Republican congressman whose constituency included the bluest of
blue-collar industries - steel - and he helped hammer out rough and tumble
trade policy for the steel industry. He's a beefy man with a ready smile,
an affable demeanor, and a firm, confident handshake. 


I'd met Reinsch during a White House briefing earlier this month when the
administration first unveiled KRAP. This past Tuesday (22 October), I was
slated to met him again in a much different setting: a debate on encryption
policy being taped for a segment of PBS's Technopolitics show. 


But something had changed in the man, changed utterly. On the day of the
taping, the man sitting across the green felt table to debate me was a
ghost. It quickly became apparent that Reinsch was "out of the loop"
regarding a program for which he was now the administration's point man.
The White House had buried him in KRAP, without having the decency to hand
him a shovel. The man deserves better than that. 


The White House
<http://www.netizen.com/netizen/96/40/special2a.html>unloaded its KRAP on
the public on 1 October. At that time, the White House said President
Clinton would "sign off" on the policy "sometime in mid-October." Funny
thing, mid-October has come and gone and no word from the White House as to
whether the prez has put pen to policy. 


During the debate, I asked Reinsch about the blown deadline. Perhaps the
president had signed off without telling anyone? 


"I don't know whether he has signed off or not," Reinsch said, clearly
uncomfortable with the admission. Whoa! The man charged with overseeing
this KRAP didn't even know if the president had yet signed off on the plan. 


I can't imagine the administration would not inform the man who's supposed
to honcho what is arguably one of its most controversial Net-related
policies. And Reinsch remained mute on the subject, just before he goes
into a televised debate? What's going on here? 


Reinsch's ghostliness speaks volumes about this KRAP. The White House has
clearly tried to get industry and the public to believe there is substance
underlying a policy that is nothing more than a bag of smoke ... and even
the existence of the bag is questionable. 


Reinsch did say that "we have released a couple of pages" of additional
information regarding the policy. "It's an ongoing process," he said. Which
leads me to believe that if he's not entirely out of the loop, he's at
least been reduced to a messenger boy, feeding industry a few updates now
and then and, in turn, taking industry comments back to the White House. 


So we're three weeks into this new policy, which the administration has
been working on for two-plus years, and it still can't answer fundamental
questions about its viability. For example, what are the requirements and
guidelines outlining who qualifies to hold the vital decrypting keys? What
happens if one of the so-called "key recovery access providers" goes
bankrupt while in possession of millions of keys? Are those keys
automatically turned over to the FBI for "safekeeping"? Are they "auctioned
off," much like the Resolution Trust Corporation auctioned off real estate
it foreclosed on? 


What's more, Reinsch's isolation belies who's in real control of the new
crypto policy. The KRAP dictates that jurisdiction of encryption exports
moves from the State Department, where it's currently regarded as a
munition, to the Commerce Department. That Reinsch is Commerce's export man
and yet doesn't really even know when Clinton's going to sign off on the
new plan just points up that the jurisdiction shell-game is working. 


When the White House announced this KRAP, one odd twist was that the
Justice Department was given a seat on the panel that rules on whether a
particular type of encryption program is allowed to be exported. There is
no precedent for Justice (read: the FBI) being a part of the
export-approval process. Until now. 


Reinsch claims that no member of the crypto export approval board - which
includes the Pentagon, the CIA and the National Security Agency - has veto
power over a crypto product. For example, a "no" vote from the FBI doesn't
mean that a product can't be exported, if the others on the panel approve. 


"The only one with veto power is the president," Reinsch said on the day
the White House dumped KRAP in the public square. However, if the FBI's
vote is in the minority, it can "appeal" such a decision to the president,
asking him to uphold their veto. 


With Reinsch apparently being squeezed out of the process, it appears that
the Justice Department, which fought tooth-and-nail for a seat on that
crypto export panel, really is driving the entire KRAP. This is a policy
coup, and apparently a coup with the blessings of the White House. 


Although the FBI gets a single vote on the crypto export panel, it seems
their paranoid vision of encryption is the one that will carry the most
weight - something that Reinsch flatly denied when the issue was raised
during the White House rollout briefing on the subject. 


I'm sure he would have denied it again during our debate, had I asked him.
But frankly, I was too struck by the idea of debating a ghost and trying to
figure out what it must feel like to be Reinsch sitting there, under the
studio lights, wondering how he is supposed to implement a policy that's
woefully lacking in substance and saddled with the most fitting acronym
since CREEP. It would be easier to herd cats. 




"Sure," he said, and then he turned, heading to the dressing room to shed
his makeup. Dead man walking. 


Meeks out...