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Joe Biden tried to ban email encryption back in 1991

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Re: Joe Biden tried to ban email encryption back in 1991

#41

Post by tptacek »

declan wrote: post #31
tptacek wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You wrote about this incorrectly; you cited Biden's language, which begins "It is the sense of Congress that", and then wrote "Translated, that means turn over your encryption keys", which it plainly does not mean, because sense-of-the-Senate language doesn't create law. Then, you wrote "Joe Biden made his second attempt to introduce such legislation in the form of the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Ac…

There are two separate points here: first, whether PRZ released PGP because of what Biden's bill symbolized, and second, whether Biden was anti-crypto. For the first, see PRZ's contemporaneous statement: http://www.philzimmermann.com/EN/essays/WhyIWrotePGP.html It was this bill that led me to publish PGP electronically for free that year, shortly before the measure was defeated after vigorous protest by civil liberta…

Sorry, I was needlessly hostile in my preceding comment.

You wrote about the bill as was part of an actual effort to restrict cryptography. But it wasn't. In fact, the bill preceded CALEA, which was a very important bill that established statutory authority for lawful intercept; lawful intercept is the most important concept captured in Biden's (practically meaningless) amendment, and cryptography is only ancillary.

Further, the record over the rest of the '90s supports that interpretation. Most importantly CALEA, which Biden cosponsored, and which forbids the federal government from requiring telcos to adopt any specific equipment (ie, the government could not mandate that MCI use switches with specific lawful intercept features) and which all but demands that telcos stay out of the business of encrypting and decrypting altogether, which is exactly what the cipherpunks wanted.

I'd like to see actual evidence supporting the idea that Biden opposed general-purpose cryptography. It may well exist, but I haven't found it on the record. Phil Zimmerman is many things, but "legal expert" is not one of them; we need to do better than "Phil Zimmerman felt like he was under attack" (all commercial cryptographers felt that way even after CALEA passed) and "Biden thought the director of NSA was competent" (hey, he probably was.)

Re: Joe Biden tried to ban email encryption back in 1991

#42

Post by greenyoda »

biesnecker wrote: post #13
tptacek wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This statement is profoundly ignorant on many levels, including the relationship between Obama and Biden, Biden's relationship to '90s crypto regulation, and Obama's take on the 4th amendment. Let's try to catalog the misconceptions here: * Biden is not a key Obama influencer. The VP rarely is, but this one in particular. * Obama's tensions with the 4th Amendment stem from counterterrorism and a desire to continue jo…

That "we were still subsidizing those same terrorists" bit causes me to reflexively facepalm every time I think about it.

Political alliances are constantly shifting. The US was allied with the Soviet Union in WWII. Then the USSR became the US's arch-enemy in the Cold War. The Osama bin Laden that the US was subsidizing in the 1980s was at that time fighting against the Soviet army in Afghanistan.

Another example of shifting alliances: During the Iran vs. Iraq war, the US and other Western countries were subsidizing Saddam Hussein, since Iraq was considered the lesser of two evils (they had not taken US diplomats hostage as the Iranians had). Everyone looked the other way when the Iraqis used chemical weapons on the Iranians. When Iraq invaded Kuwait, they became an enemy of the US because they were threatening US oil suppliers. At the present time, the Iraqi government is again a friend of the US. In a few years, things could change again.

Re: Joe Biden tried to ban email encryption back in 1991

#43

Post by tptacek »

declan wrote: post #25
tptacek wrote: post #7

The whole US government tried to ban encryption wholesale in the 1990s; they even attempted to standardize a bespoke algorithm (Skipjack) that provided key escrow for law enforcement. During the same period, they religiously enforced export controls that classified any encryption code, including simple hash functions, as munitions. I remember buying a "this t-shirt is a munition" shirt in '95 by giving a website the…

Although Biden's amendment by itself wouldn't have outlawed SSH, it was enough to make programmers see the writing on the wall. A bill with domestic restrictions on encryption was approved by a House committee in the 1990s, and Biden's bill was what prompted PRZ to release PGP, as PRZ himself said at the time. See: http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-20032910-281.html In response to lobbying from the FBI, a House commi…

(a) You appear to be referring to a bill that died in a House committee.

(b) It's not in dispute that the DOJ opposed cryptography in the '90s (that's the lede of the comment you're replying to).

(c) The bill you're referring to had nothing to do with Biden.

(d) The one crypto-relevant bill that does bear Biden's name explicitly forbids the government from demanding that ISPs design networks so as to provide plaintext to law enforcement.

Let's keep the goal-posts clear here. The thread we're commenting on says Joe Biden opposed encryption. That's relevant because Joe Biden is a part of the current administration. I wouldn't want to perpetuate that unfounded idea by pointing out that other people were opposed to encryption in the 1990s; it was a common belief back then.

Re: Joe Biden tried to ban email encryption back in 1991

#44

Post by downandout »

On this issue, Biden was clearly on the wrong side of history (and some of the fundamental tenets upon which the US was founded). But I don't think anyone, even ardent Obama supporters, would argue that he's the brightest star in the sky anyway. He is perhaps the strongest protection against an Obama assassination, since no one would want him to take office.

Fortunately, the system worked in this case. A dangerous law introduced by a dimwitted person was not allowed to weave its way into our system. As a result, the Internet flourished and we are able to discuss this issue on Hacker News. While we haven't been so lucky on other such laws, in general, we should all be grateful that the US system is as effective as it is in muzzling these types of people and the changes they try to make.

Re: Joe Biden tried to ban email encryption back in 1991

#45

Post by tptacek »

declan wrote: post #39
tptacek wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, worth noting that Biden cosponsored a bill less than a year later that (a) provided for lawful intercept of telecommunications while (b) explicitly exempting providers from a requirement to provide plaintext.

The history of that law, CALEA, is a bit more complicated than that. See: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10024163-38.html CALEA represented one step in the FBI and NSA's attempts to restrict encryption without backdoors. In a top-secret memo to members of President George H.W. Bush's administration including Defense Secretary Dick Cheney and CIA director Robert Gates, one White House official wrote: "Justice shoul…

CALEA was not passed under the Bush administration; it was passed by a Democratic Senate during the Clinton administration. What does a top-secret memo to George Bush tell us about Joe Biden or CALEA?

Again, I know this sounds pedantic, but it's not an academic distinction. There was definitely a pervasive sentiment that technology was moving faster than law enforcement could keep up with, and that some fix was required. We're talking about a point in time where many phone exchanges still weren't digitally switched! At issue wasn't simply that criminals could evade wiretaps, but that some exchanges might transition to equipment that would preclude wiretapping altogether.

It's intellectually risky to take that sentiment and focus it on cryptography, as if any one player in 1993 had established themselves as an opponent of general-purpose cryptography. This whole thread discusses one word ("plaintext") in a meaningless sense-of-the-Senate resolution that had much more to do with digital switching than it did with cryptography.

Re: Joe Biden tried to ban email encryption back in 1991

#46

Post by tptacek »

declan wrote: post #21
tptacek wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This statement is profoundly ignorant on many levels, including the relationship between Obama and Biden, Biden's relationship to '90s crypto regulation, and Obama's take on the 4th amendment. Let's try to catalog the misconceptions here: * Biden is not a key Obama influencer. The VP rarely is, but this one in particular. * Obama's tensions with the 4th Amendment stem from counterterrorism and a desire to continue jo…

I'd add a friendly amendment: CALEA was intended to be a first step, a "beachhead," toward domestic controls on encryption. The fact that the second step was not successful came despite efforts by Biden, the FBI, the NSA, etc. -- not because of them. See below. http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10024163-38.html "Joe Biden made his second attempt to introduce such legislation" in the form of the Communications Assista…

I'd ask here how a bill can be a "beachhead" against encryption when it forbids the government from even requiring that telcos adopt equipment for which wiretaps are feasible, and when it specifically exempts telcos from being required to facilitate decryption.

Re: Joe Biden tried to ban email encryption back in 1991

#47

Post by kabdib »

sageikosa wrote: post #34
kabdib wrote: post #29

Feinstein supported this, too. I wrote her a letter; her response was along the lines of "I don't care, and in any event it's good for you." Haven't voted for her since. With recent events, even though I don't live in CA any more, I plan to give her opponents money, for any election she's a candidate in.

She doesn't need your vote.

But her oppponents do. And her opponents could use some cash, too.

Re: Joe Biden tried to ban email encryption back in 1991

#48

Post by tptacek »

waffle_ss wrote: post #32

One little-known fact about Biden is that he authored the [Omnibus Counterterrorism Act of 1995][1]. This bill was a precursor to the PATRIOT Act in several ways, such as by ["allowing secret evidence to be used in prosecutions, expanding FISA and wiretap laws, creating a new federal crime of 'terrorism' that could be invoked based on political beliefs, permitting the U.S. military to be used in civilian law enforcem…

The anti-terrorism bill to which you refer does not simply criminalize political beliefs, as you imply; rather, it would have allowed prosecutions to raise federal terrorism charges for violent crimes if they met one 9 tests mostly having to do with deliberate attempts to disrupt commerce, target the US government explicitly, or involved people who were not US nationals. It was in that sense like "hate crimes" legislation.

The indefinite detention provision concerned foreign nationals who could not be repatriated (which is a sticky problem everywhere), and provided for judicial review in the US DC Circuit.

It was a stupid bill, but that doesn't mean we should be imprecise about it.

Re: Joe Biden tried to ban email encryption back in 1991

#49

Post by tptacek »

mtgx wrote: post #35
kabdib wrote: post #29

Feinstein supported this, too. I wrote her a letter; her response was along the lines of "I don't care, and in any event it's good for you." Haven't voted for her since. With recent events, even though I don't live in CA any more, I plan to give her opponents money, for any election she's a candidate in.

I hope she loses in the next election. She was the one that pretty forcefully pushed the FISA reauthorization with as little debate as possible through Senate. It made me angry just hearing her talk about how the Senate shouldn't waste any time with the amendments and just quickly pass FISA before the year is over.

She cosponsored the bill they were renewing back in 2008. What did you expect her to think?

Re: Joe Biden tried to ban email encryption back in 1991

#50

Post by lubujackson »

Read Crypto by Steven Levy. An amazing account of how cryptography was finally opened up for the Internet. Because before the Net, the wording of the law was very, very restrictive in a way that made no sense with how the Internet operated. It really is eye opening to see the role the NSA played and the tactics they used to try to keep things smothered. Not very different than what is still happening right now with the NSA, apparently.
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