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|  |  | To access the contents, click the chapter and section titles. Applied Cryptography, Second Edition: Protocols, Algorthms, and Source Code in C (cloth) (Publisher: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.) Author(s): Bruce Schneier ISBN: 0471128457 Publication Date: 01/01/96 Search this book:
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Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) The EFF is dedicated to protecting civil rights in cyberspace. With respect to cryptographic policy in the United States, they believe that information and access to cryptography are fundamental rights, and therefore should be free of government restriction. They organized the Digital Privacy and Security Working Group, a coalition of 50 organizations. The group opposed the Digital Telephony bill and the Clipper initiative. The EFF is also helping in a lawsuit against cryptography export controls [143]. Anyone interested in joining the EFF should contact Electronic Frontier Foundation, 1001 G Street NW, Suite 950E, Washington, D.C. 20001; (202) 347-5400; fax: (202) 393-5509; Internet: eff@eff.org. Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) The ACM is an international computer industry organization. In 1994 the U.S. ACM Public Policy Committee produced an excellent report on U.S. cryptography policy [935]. This should be required reading for anyone interested in the politics of cryptography. It is available via anonymous ftp from info.acm.org in /reports/acm_crypto/acm_crypto_study.ps. Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) The IEEE is another professional organization. The U.S. office investigates and makes recommendations on privacy-related issues including encryption policy, identity numbers, and privacy protections on the Internet. Software Publishers Association (SPA) The SPA is a trade association of over 1000 personal computer software companies. They have lobbied for relaxation of export controls on cryptography, and maintain a list of commercially available foreign cryptography products. ### 25.11 Sci.crypt Sci.crypt is the Usenet newsgroup for cryptology. It is read by an estimated 100,000 people worldwide. Most of the posts are nonsense, bickering, or both; some are political, and most of the rest are requests for information or basic questions. Occasionally nuggets of new and useful information are posted to this newsgroup. If you follow sci.crypt regularly, you will learn how to use something called a kill file. Another Usenet newsgroup is sci.crypt.research, a moderated newsgroup devoted to discussions about cryptology research. There are fewer posts and they are more interesting. ### 25.12 Cypherpunks The Cypherpunks are an informal group of people interested in teaching and learning about cryptography. They also experiment with cryptography and try to put it into use. In their opinion, all the cryptographic research in the world doesn’t do society any good unless it gets used. In “A Cypherpunk’s Manifesto,” Eric Hughes writes [744]: We the Cypherpunks are dedicated to building anonymous systems. We are defending our privacy with cryptography, with anonymous mail forwarding systems, with digital signatures, and with electronic money. Cypherpunks write code. We know that someone has to write software to defend privacy, and since we can’t get privacy unless we all do, we’re going to write it. We publish our code so that our fellow Cypherpunks may practice and play with it. Our code is free for all to use, worldwide. We don’t care much if you don’t approve of the software we write. We know that software can’t be destroyed and that widely dispersed systems can’t be shut down. People interested in joining the cypherpunks mailing list on the Internet should send mail to majordomo@toad.com. The mailing list is archived at ftp.csua.berkeley.edu in /pub/cypherpunks. ### 25.13 Patents Software patents are an issue much larger than the scope of this book. Whether they’re good or bad, they exist. Algorithms, cryptographic algorithms included, can be patented in the United States. IBM owned the DES patents [514]. IDEA is patented. Almost every public-key algorithm is patented. NIST even has a patent for the DSA. Some cryptography patents have been blocked by intervention from the NSA, under the authority of the Invention Secrecy Act of 1940 and the National Security Act of 1947. This means that instead of a patent, the inventor gets a secrecy order and is prohibited from discussing his invention with anybody. The NSA has special dispensation when it comes to patents. They can apply for a patent and then block its issuance. It’s a secrecy order again, but here the NSA is both the inventor and the issuer of the order. When, at some later date, the secrecy order is removed, the Patent Office issues the patent good for the standard 17 years. This rather clearly protects the invention while keeping it secret. If someone else invents the same thing, the NSA has already filed for the patent. If no one else invents it, then it remains secret. Not only does this fly directly in the face of the patent process, which is supposed to disclose as well as protect inventions, it allows the NSA to keep a patent for more than 17 years. The 17-year clock starts ticking after the patent is issued, not when it is filed. How this will change, now that the United States has ratified the GATT treaty, is unclear. ### 25.14 U.S. Export Rules According to the U.S. government, cryptography can be a munition. This means it is covered under the same rules as a TOW missile or an M1 Abrams tank. If you sell cryptography overseas without the proper export license, then you are an international arms smuggler. Unless you think time in a federal penitentiary would look good on your résumé, pay attention to the rules. With the advent of the Cold War in 1949, all of the NATO countries (except Iceland), and later Australia, Japan, and Spain, formed CoCom, the Coordinating Committee for Multilateral Export Controls. This is an unofficial nontreaty organization, chartered to coordinate national restrictions on the export of sensitive military technologies to the Soviet Union, other Warsaw Pact countries, and the People’s Republic of China. Examples of controlled technologies are computers, milling machinery, and cryptography. The goal here was to slow technology transfer into those countries, and thereby keep their militaries inferior.
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