From: [c j p] at [pitt.edu] (Casimir J Palowitch)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc
Subject: Help fight the Clinton Administration's invasion of your privacy
Date: 18 Apr 93 12:40:51 GMT

The Clinton Administration wants to "manage" your use of digital
encryption. This includes a proposal which would limit your use of
encryption to a standard developed by the NSA, the technical details of 
which would remain classified with the government.

This cannot be allowed to happen.

I urge everyone who believes in the free and unimpeded flow of
information and communication to take time out to lobby against this
with your elected representatives. 

Press release of the organization Computer Professionals for Social
Responsibility, reprinted without explicit permission:

-------------------begin press release---------------------------

Organization: CPSR Civil Liberties and Computing Project

April 16, 1993                          Washington, DC

               COMPUTER PROFESSIONALS CALL FOR PUBLIC 
           DEBATE ON NEW GOVERNMENT ENCRYPTION INITIATIVE

        Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility (CPSR) today
called for the public disclosure of technical data underlying the
government's newly-announced "Public Encryption Management"
initiative.  The new cryptography scheme was announced today by the
White House and the National Institute for Standards and Technology
(NIST), which will implement the technical specifications of the plan.
A NIST spokesman acknowledged that the National Security Agency (NSA),
the super-secret military intelligence agency, had actually developed
the encryption technology around which the new initiative is built.

        According to NIST, the technical specifications and the
Presidential directive establishing the plan are classified.  To open
the initiative to public review and debate, CPSR today filed a series
of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests with key agencies,
including NSA, NIST, the National Security Council and the FBI for
information relating to the encryption plan.  The CPSR requests are in
keeping with the spirit of the Computer Security Act, which Congress
passed in 1987 in order to open the development of non-military
computer security standards to public scrutiny and to limit NSA's role
in the creation of such standards.

        CPSR previously has questioned the role of NSA in developing
the so-called "digital signature standard" (DSS), a communications
authentication technology that NIST proposed for government-wide use
in 1991.  After CPSR sued NIST in a FOIA lawsuit last year, the
civilian agency disclosed for the first time that NSA had, in fact,
developed that security standard.  NSA is due to file papers in
federal court next week justifying the classification of records
concerning its creation of the DSS.

        David Sobel, CPSR Legal Counsel, called the administration's
apparent commitment to the privacy of electronic communications, as
reflected in today's official statement, "a step in the right
direction."  But he questioned the propriety of NSA's role in the
process and the apparent secrecy that has thus far shielded the
development process from public scrutiny.  "At a time when we are
moving towards the development of a new information infrastructure, it
is vital that standards designed to protect personal privacy be
established openly and with full public participation.  It is not
appropriate for NSA -- an agency with a long tradition of secrecy and
opposition to effective civilian cryptography -- to play a leading
role in the development process."

        CPSR is a national public-interest alliance of computer
industry professionals dedicated to examining the impact of technology
on society.  CPSR has 21 chapters in the U.S. and maintains offices in
Palo Alto, California, Cambridge, Massachusetts and Washington, DC.
For additional information on CPSR, call (415) 322-3778 or e-mail
<[c p sr] at [csli.stanford.edu]>.



---------------------------end press release----------------------

-- 
** Casimir J. (Casey) Palowitch  -  In 1996, there will be two kinds  **
**      Slavic Cataloger         -  of computer professional : those  **
**  U. of Pgh. Library Systems   -    who know NeXTStep, and those    **
**       [c j p] at [pitt.edu]           -              without Jobs.         **