South Coast Telecommunications Alliance (SCTA)
Held at General Research Corporation, Santa Barbara CA
August 28, 1995 - Minutes of Meeting
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Bruce Hannah moderated.

The speaker of the evening is Dr. Martin Hellman on "Privacy in the 
Electronic Age"

Upcoming events: 
--The Glen Culler honorary dinner and lecture on 9/8/95
--The first community network symposium 9/10/95 at Santa Barbara City
College in the business and communications bldg. 
--"the forum"  
--Nancy Oster reminded the new people to sign up so she can keep the 
mailing list up to date. 
--Bruce requested donations for pizza and copies and future expenses


Bruce introduced Marty Hellman with a brief historical overview including 
his most well known accomplishments, the public key encryption method as 
well as his efforts to help end the cold war. 

An overview of Martys' talk:

Why should everyone be interested in encryption. Shared communication 
channels such as satellite, wireless, LANs. This is a step down in 
privacy from telephone type switched communications where a wiretap is 
required. 

The other reason is the cheap availability of computer power to sort and 
search for interesting messages. The cost of reading messages is about 10 
billion words/ $1. Its too easy and cheap to spy. 
Cheap transparent encryption is the answer. It should be very strong 
encryption as well. Computation costs have fallen by a factor 10 billion 
in the last 50 year. Encryption should be about $1-$10 to put on an 
integrated circuit. Today's strong encryption will be tomorrow's easy to 
break code.

How do you keep the key secure. In single key encryption, couriers carry 
the keys to points of use. Communication points do not vary much over 
time with this scheme. He thought that the revolution would occur as soon 
as they invented public key. They were 20 years ahead of the curve. 
Awareness was one problem. The other was the US Government-- they hobbled 
development with import restrictions and laws. The latest solution was 
the Clipper Chip. An escrow agent which we are asked to trust is one 
problem. The algorithm, called Skipjack, was secret (same as DES). The 
cost of the chip would add $25 to the cost of products. Also it didn't 
account for the need for a world wide standard. Another problem was-- Do 
you trust the U.S.Government? Marty read about it in the New York Times. 
He felt that the approach that the government took was high-handed and 
did not account for too many important issues. The Clipper was a failure. 
A little philosophy: If the shoe was on the other foot, what is most 
important-- your life or your civil liberties? He is in favor of 
voluntary key escrow with an emphasis on voluntary. He also thinks that 
heavy criminal sanctions must apply to compromise by any party. It should 
be freely exportable with a free choice of algorithm. If we wait until 
its clear that foreign companies have incorporated encryption into their 
products, it will be too late for US industry to catch up. Key escrow 
will be needed to insure that your data will be needed and desirable. 

Questions: 
--What about PGP? He doesn't think its too important because
it's not transparent and integrated with applications.  
--What is Marty's guess on when the U.S.Government might reach a 
compromise plan? Commercial key escrow seems to be acceptable. Would 
think that it should be done within the next year. 
--Has the FBI ever used wiretapping to actually crack a case? The FBI has 
really fronted NSAs concerns. They won't tell you how information 
gathering helps them. 90% of the wiretaps are for vice. 
--Is DES insecure today? Yes. In closing Marty advised that we write
our congressman and senators. This is the best way to influence the
future. Marty will be retiring from his active participation in his field.
He is a Grandpa and likes to fly sailplanes. He hasn't decided what he may
like to do after that. 

Dave Oster

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David Oster, CEO                  | Wide-Area Network Interface Cards
MultiAccess Computing Corporation | Novell * FTP * Macintosh * Windows 
805-964-2332 fax 805-681-7469     | Frame relay * SMDS * CDS * DXI
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