REPORT ON EFF/EFF-AUSTIN CRYPTO CONFERENCE, 9/22/93 by Steve Jackson (This report is dedicated to the public domain; feel free to repost widely.) Before a standing-room-only audience of over 200, Mitch Kapor, John Gilmore and other technopolicy experts criticized the federal "Clipper Chip" proposal at a cryptography conference held today in Austin. Jointly sponsored by the Electronic Frontier Foundation and EFF-Austin, the one-day conference included three blue-ribbon panels on various aspects of cryptography policy. The issue of public access to cryptography is rapidly heating up, as secure encoding programs become available to private individuals. Meanwhile, the government maintains tight export restrictions on cryptographic products. In fact, a federal grand jury is now examining business records subpoenaed from commercial cryptography providers - including one in Austin - in an apparent investigation of exports. The audience wasn't just computer-literate, but computer-armed-and- dangerous. The rattling of laptop keys sounded from at least 20 spots in the room as Bruce Sterling presented a keynote explanation of cryptography and why it's important: "We all have digital irons in the virtual fire." The conference led off with a discussion between Mitch Kapor (founder of Lotus Development and chairman of the Electronic Frontier Foundation) and Jerry Berman (executive director of the EFF). Most of the commentary had to do with the process by which the Clipper had been presented, and might still be mandated. Berman stated flatly that the Clipper program simply will not do the job its advocates say it will, as long as it's voluntary . . . and if it becomes mandatory, it raises "fundamental Constitutional issues which they don't want to confront . . . they're between a rock and a hard place." Kapor, wearing a Secret Service cap, discussed the Washington policy process. "You would be surprised how little depth of thinking-through there is on these issues of the information superhighway. People are trying to do the right thing . . . you might think that they've got a lot of deep thinkers sitting around and trying to figure out what the right thing to do is. No. It's the `crisis of the day.' And in that sort of atmosphere, reasonable people sometimes feel that what they're doing is the best compromise under the circumstances. There's a lack of commitment to doing the right thing . . . people think they're making creative compromises when in fact they're making stupid mistakes." But he also commented that compromises are sometimes the only option: "There is a role for moral outrage, but in Washington, moral outrage only gets you so far." Quotes: Kapor: "We're very much in favor of the private sector as opposed to the government undertaking construction activities. The government doesn't have the money or the expertise. . . . Common carrier, private sector, universal access." "People don't understand the nature of the problems. The problems keep getting greater and greater, and the solutions get more and more absurd." "Whoever actually owns the data highways shouldn't be able to control what goes across them. That's the principle of common carrier. It should be updated to reflect that fact that we want more competition and fewer regulated monopolies, but the principle still holds." John Gilmore, answering a question about copying the chip: "The idea is that they use a technology to build the chip that makes it hard to reverse-engineer, developed for classified chips, that has not been seen in the real world." He went on to say that the government has so far not responded to requests for sample chips to allow independent experts to test this claim. Following the CFP model, the panels were separated by long breaks for discussion, networking and argument. The crowd was mixed: not just "computer people" and journalists, but also high school and college students, several law enforcement professionals, and one labor union officer, from Houston and San Antonio as well as Austin. The second panel, on law enforcement, was a dialogue between Esther Dyson (long-time industry observer and newsletter editor) and Mike Godwin (Legal Services Counsel for the EFF). The discussion, and most of the audience's questions, focused on the current and probable future legality of various encryption systems. Quotes: Esther Dyson: "If government gives us this weak encryption, and mandates that we use it . . . then what the public thinks about the issue doesn't matter any longer." Mike Godwin: "Sure, cryptography is inconvenient to law enforcement. But we have other things that are inconvenient. Look at that pesky prohibition against forced confessions. You know they did it . . . but the police can't make them confess. Isn't that troubling?" "For so long, technological advances meant decreases in privacy. Now there's a technological advance that empowers privacy . . . not just on a corporate level, but on an individual level." The final panel was entitled simply ``Cypherpunks,'' and included Eric Hughes (founder of the Cypherpunks mailing list), John Gilmore (programmer and free-software activist) and John Perry Barlow (co-founder of the EFF). They talked about just how easy it is, already, to encrypt your communications, using PGP and other systems. They also discussed how quickly some older encoding methods are failing before decryption technology. Quotes: John Gilmore: "How many of you have broken no laws this month?" (No hands appeared.) "That's why we need encryption. There are too many laws, and the wrong things are illegal." "What do we want out of cryptography? You can sum it up in two words: unprecedented mobility. Your friends and co-workers can be scattered in physical space." "Outlawing cryptography is like outlawing pencils because bookies use them to record bets." "We're trying to make people aware of these problems (cryptographi- cally competent crackers) and push out the free software solutions that solve them." John Perry Barlow: "The more I think about what it means to have the Internet everywhere on this planet, combined with widespread use of encryption technology, the more I think this is the biggest development since fire. And if you think that's an exaggeration, think about what's going to go down when these technologies come together." "Huge economies may develop, utterly invisible to everyone not involved in them. The kind of economies that would break most world governments. If taxes become voluntary, there are many government `services' that most people will no longer want to pay for. "The administration . . . is defending a position on cryptography which doesn't make it easy to explain its benefits to society." Eric Hughes: "It's amazing how much publicity we (the cypherpunks) have gotten just in this first year. We hit a hot button. It's the flowering of cryptography." "In order to have a private key, you have to own your own CPU. Most people use dialin services, where mail is being received at someone else's computer. If you put your private key on that system, it's unsafe." "Digital privacy is for the rich. We have to face that. Digital privacy is class-based. But it's getting cheaper." "Cypherpunks want privacy for other people, not just for themselves. Easy-to-use for a programmer is not easy-to-use for other people." Hughes: "I'm surprised that those `secret' e-mail addresses for Congressmen haven't come across the cypherpunks list." Barlow: "They have. Just a couple of days ago." (Applause . . . ) At the close of the conference, EFF-Austin president Jon Lebkowsky summed it up: "What impressed me is that a topic which is still relatively arcane attracted such an active and vocal group, even in Austin, a hotbed of networked computing. This is the next big issue." .