It’s safe to say the White House response to an esteemed panel’s conclusions on a matter critical to your privacy and safety was simple: Dam.
As in Kenneth Dam, University of Chicago law professor and former State Department, IBM and United Way honcho.
Dam, 63, has served as chairman of a hotshot, 16-member group asked by Congress to study the state of cryptography, the art and science of secret writing, and then offer recommendations to help prevent unauthorized access to computer data, phone transmissions and many other forms of electronic information.
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Don’t yawn at sight of the word cryptography. Consider the mounting ways in which your life is linked to such data–your ATM and credit cards, home computer, private medical and credit records–and realize the threats to privacy and national security.
The Clinton administration is chagrined because Dam’s panel, funded by the Departments of Defense and Commerce and working under the aegis of the non-profit National Research Council, flat out disagreed with the desires of the administration, particularly as they concern law enforcement. It concluded that the government should not have potentially unlimited access to all electronic data.
At issue are technologies that “encrypt,” or jumble data, in a way that can be deciphered only by an electronic “key.” The government does not want everybody to have access to such keys and, thus, the ability to secure information unless it, too, has access to virtually all the keys.
Allow unfettered use of encryption, the government argues, and the Bad Guys of the world will run amok. Sure, it’s fine for a law-abiding housewife in Naperville to secure all her data, but what about crooks and terrorists plotting nasty deeds? What if they communicate with one another without the possibility of detection?
Dam’s panel, which included privacy and national security specialists, cryptographers and former U.S. Atty. Gen. Benjamin Civiletti, was rife with esteem and legitimacy. It spent 18 months listening to every interest group and was given security clearances to confront certain U.S. government concerns.
Its final report, revealed at a news conference attended mostly by techie publications, noted that the evolution of cryptography from something used by spies, diplomats and the military, into something vital to protect business and privacy interests, “has created a dilemma for the U.S. government because encryption also can be used in a wide range of illegal activities.”
Thumb through its 800-page report (assuming you’re stuck in an airport waiting lounge) and one finds a wide array of examples of cryptography’s relevance to confidentiality and authentication. Even computer-illiterate reporters can understand the following:
– Insiders at the First National Bank of Chicago shifted $70 million in phony transactions out of client accounts. One deal exceeded the bank’s permissible limit, but the crooks intercepted a phone request for manual authorization. Cryptography could have denied access to that request.
– A Russian mathematician pleaded guilty to penetrating computers of Citibank. Working from a computer terminal in St. Petersburg, he stole and transferred $2.8 million from New York accounts, sending it to accounts he controlled in Finland, Israel and San Francisco.
– A Green Bay Packers player was overheard making explicit requests to a male escort service. Similarly, Princess Diana was taped by a retired bank manager as she had a 23-minute phone chat with “my darling Squidge.” Encryption would have prevented public knowledge of either chat.
– A Newsweek reporter, who had written critically of computer hackers, was harassed by hackers who got into a TRW credit database, obtained and used his credit card numbers, and crashed his home computer after stealing his unlisted phone number.
– A convicted forger was released from prison after a forged fax was received ordering his release. Encryption would have detected that a legitimate fax had been altered.
“Our committee’s broad conclusion is that the wider use of cryptography will support personal privacy, U.S. business, law enforcement and national security interests, even though information gathering for law enforcement and national security purposes may become more difficult in certain circumstances,” said Dam.
To that end, his group urged a variety of federal policies to promote, not discourage, use of cryptography, notably relaxing stringent rules on exporting encryption. Those rules, which limit how powerful exported encryption systems can be, thwart domestic encryption because firms are hesitant to produce different products for foreign markets.
Meanwhile, some government officials admit to fear that widespread encryption could lead to protecting crooks but also to the hiding of financial transactions, making it possible to avoid paying taxes. A company could pay an employee electronically and nobody would know it.
Conceding that “we do have to stop” the rash of computer-related crimes, Dam said in an interview that much better cryptography is needed and the longer the wait, the more vulnerable we’ll be as a nation.
A former provost at the university, he is sensitive to government concerns. He was deputy secretary of state during the Reagan years, serving under former U. of C. professor George Shultz, before leaving to become a vice president at IBM. He later served as interim president of the United Way of America after its longtime boss, William Aramony, quit amid allegations of financial impropriety.
That his panel largely disavowed the Clinton administration’s preferences was not lost on Brock Meeks, a flamboyant, high-energy on-line journalist known to many Internet mavens.
“What they did is pretty significant,” said Meeks, Washington correspondent for Wire and HotWired magazines. “To have gotten a consensus from as broad a group as was on that panel is no easy feat.”
“Like it or not,” said Meeks, “our society is moving more and more to a world where everything will happen electronically. If you don’t appreciate the importance of encryption now, you will five years from now.”
Having a party? Call the Navy
Wondering about a nifty place to throw a great party? Call the Navy. They just might have the warship you’re looking for–and at a dandy rate.
Barry R. Sloane, North American major domo for private banking at Geneva-based Credit Suisse, confirmed that he and eight private clients celebrated Memorial Day on the U.S.S. John F. Kennedy, off the New York coast, having been flown there from New Jersey by the Navy.
They spent the evening, rooming in junior officers’ quarters and then were helicoptered to the U.S.S. Intrepid, now docked at a Manhattan pier as a floating museum, and met President Clinton there. And all at Navy expense.
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“It was part of a distinguished visitors program,” Sloane explained to me, noting that this was all a function of his being vice-chairman of the Intrepid Museum Foundation in New York.
“We try our best to expose opinion leaders to the activities of the fleet. Opinion leaders and senior corporate leaders who’ve never been aboard a ship get to see it.”
“People in the financial community can understand the (Navy’s) mission and what the Navy’s all about,” he said.
In this time of balanced-budget mania, they should start charging. What about bar mitzvahs at the Brooklyn Navy Yard for, say, $15,000, or Tailhook bachelor parties for you and 2,000 chums in Vegas for $100,000?
Cokie watch
Well, celebrity softball questioner Larry King couldn’t make his talk-for-cash appearance before the Managed Futures Association on Thursday, so heavyweight moonlighter George Will of ABC News took his place. He usually gets around $20,000.