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."Ray and I kept encountering lots of blank stares," Brooks said later.''What we were encountering wasa lack of appreciation that digital communications was here.Wiretapping was just doing clips, or goingto the phone office.But the phone companies had all gone digital.The next step [in understanding] wasthat encryption was going to exist on the digital lines." 44 To the FBI the cryptographic issues seemedfuturistic.There was a clash of understandings."A successful FBI agent," Kammer explained, "kicks in thedoor, arrests the guy, and goes on to the next case." The issues NIST and NSA were raising weremore subtle."A successful NSA man.well give him a hard problem and the first thing he'll do issit down and think sometimes for a very long time."45 NSA had been thinking about strongcryptography for a long time, but the FBI did not have any experts remotely close to the area.Theclosest the Bureau had were agents working on defeating electronic locks and alarms.After a number of visits to the FBI over several months, Brooks and Kammer encountered JamesKallstrom, Chief of the Special Operations Branch of the New York Field Office."It was obvious,"Kallstrom recalls, "that encryption had been around a long time.What was new here was it had neverbeen an issue before for the general public.Old encryption didn't work; it was too bulky, yousounded like Donald Duck.But in the late eighties we could see that it wouldn't be very long beforecheap encryption would be around that would put us out of business."46Kallstrom's tenure in New York undoubtedly shaped his viewpoint.Historically, New York State hasrelied heavily on electronic surveillance.47 For example, over a third of the 1994 Title III electronicsurveillances occurred in New York State.48 California, whose big cities suffer similar problems ofdrugs and crime, had one-eighth as many.49Kallstrom could not imagine law enforcement without wiretapping and did not want wiretapping todisappear from law enforcement's arsenal.He went to work: "From the standpoint of this becomingan issue in the government, from the standpoint of law enforcement, we were the user, the customer.An Interagency group was formed; the squeaky wheel was us.We went to both [NIST and NSA].Wehave a long-standing relationship with NSA; we have a responsibility for counter-terrorism andintelligence." NSA was immediately part of an interagency group focusing on problems of domesticuse of strong cryptography.NIST joined shortly afterwards."It wasn't a function of official policy.We have always recognized NSA as a premier agency [in intelligence].NIST was also at the table."50By 1991 the FBI had formulated a policy that included shoring up its ability to perform electronicsurveillance, particularly wiretaps, and preventing the establishment of unbreakable cryptography inthe public sector.Efforts in support of this policy included the Digital Telephony Proposal and theconcept of key escrow, which were introduced to the public in 1992 and 1993 respectively.In negotiating the MOU, NSA had sought to include the FBI as a full-fledged member of theTechnical Working Group (which would have meant that two-thirds of the participants came fromeither law enforcement or national security).After that effort was rebuffed by NIST scientists,Kammer and Brooks brought the FBI in by different means.The FBI's involvement in encryptionissues buttressed NSA's position.With the end of the Cold War, law-enforcement issues weresignificantly closer to the public's heart than national-security concerns.By replacing national-security concerns over cryptography with law-enforcement concerns, the FBI succeeded in returningmuch of the control of civilian cryptography to NSA."The whole Digital Telephony [effort] came out of [our meetings]," Clinton Brooks said some timelater.514National SecurityIn discussions of cryptographic policy, "national security" is usually shorthand for communicationsintelligence spying on foreign communications.It is taken for granted that the United Statesdepends on breaking foreign codes for much of its intelligence and that any decline in the success ofthis activity will make the country less secure.Intelligence, however, is only one of cryptography'sroles in national security.The Concept of National SecurityThe notion of national security is a relative newcomer to American political iconography [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]