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From: root@cca.ucsf.edu (Systems Staff)
Newsgroups: sci.crypt,news.misc
Subject: Re: "Paper on Codes is Sent Despite U.S. Objection", NYT Aug 9 1989
Summary: The NYT article makes some points which had not appeared
	 in the Usenet discussion.
Message-ID: <2295@ucsfcca.ucsf.edu>
Date: 9 Aug 89 22:47:57 GMT
References: <768@stag.math.lsa.umich.edu>
Organization: Computer Center, UCSF
Lines: 83

The following is offered by way of a review of this article which
appeared on page A11 of the national edition of the New York Times.
Unnumbered indented paragraphs are quotations from the article.

At the beginning of the article the term "security agency" is
identified as referring to the NSA.

According to the Times article J. Gilmore did not receive the paper
from Merkle:

     Mr. Merkle gave the paper to several colleagues to review
     earlier this year, and Xerox said it presented the paper
     to Government officials to review in an effort to obtain
     a license to export a computer program. A copy of the paper
     was passed to Mr. Gilmore by one of the reviewers who was
     concerned that its circulation had been restricted by the
     security agency.

So there are several new points made in this paragraph:

     1. The paper had been given to "Government officials"
        to review (i.e. have an opportunity to suppress).

     2. J. Gilmore was not a reviewer who had received the
        paper in confidence from Merkle himself. At the time
        the paper was given to Gilmore there was already
        concern about sub-rosa efforts by the NSA to suppress it.

     3. Xerox had apparently already developed at least one
        program based on these ideas and wanted to export it.

In another paragraph we find:

     Xerox executives said that the paper was reviewed by the 
     security agency and that agency officials told the company
     that they preferred it not be published.

So Xerox, not Gilmore, is saying that the NSA was attempting to
suppress the paper.

Then the following paragraph says:

     A spokeswoman for the security agency, Cynthia Beck, said
     the agency had no record of a review of the paper. But
     Xerox officials insisted that the agency had asked that the
     paper not be published.

Here we have two points:

     1. A spokesman for the agency used weasel words, i.e. "had
        no record of a review" clearly is an avoidance of denial
        of the review but is intended to give a casual reader just
        that impression. Also "record" may be assumed to have a
        technical meaning here, i.e. "on the record."

     2. To the embarrassment of the net posters crying "paranoia"
        the agency had indeed already started trying to suppress
        the paper according to Xerox.

And elsewhere we find this teaser:

     The paper also discusses in some technical detail a Xerox
     encryption technology that referred to the design of of what
     cryptographers call an S-Box, a coding mechanism. The security
     agency has restricted the publication of information about
     that technology as it related to an official government
     standard, the data encryption standard.

Please notice the past tense there; "has restricted the publication"
it says. So they have taken explicit action to suppress public
knowledge of the reliability of the DES on which the security
of our financial transactions etc. depends.

 Thos Sumner       Internet: thos@cca.ucsf.edu
 (The I.G.)        UUCP: ...ucbvax!ucsfcgl!cca.ucsf!thos
                   BITNET:  thos@ucsfcca

 U.S. Mail:  Thos Sumner, Computer Center, Rm U-76, UCSF
             San Francisco, CA 94143-0704 USA

OS|2 -- an Operating System for puppets.

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