Hacking the White House - encryption vs government communications regulation - Government Activity

Software Magazine, Nov, 1997 by Eno Jackson

"TRY NOT TO DROOL ON TOO MANY PEOPLE, AND REMEMBER I MISS U!!!" This line was among the electronic communications from the highest level of government revealed when pager messages to and from President Clinton's entourage were published on the Internet in September (www.inch.com/~esoteric/pam--suggestion/formal.html).

An unidentified hacker intercepted the messages when the President traveled to Philadelphia last spring. They were released on the net by Pam Finkel, a New York City-based computer consultant and member of the hacker's group "2600." Including such minutiae as basketball game scores and how long Chelsea waited on hold to speak to her father, the release of the information came at a particularly embarrassing moment for the Clinton Administration.

Finkel says the release of the material was timed to coincide with discussion of a controversial domestic encryption control amendment to the Security and Freedom through Encryption (SAFE) bill. The amendment would have outlawed the manufacture of encryption software without a key recovery provision, allowing law enforcement to read private communications. The Clinton administration opposes development of unbreakable encryption products, including those that would have prevented the interception and publication of the pager information.

Downplaying the incident, White House spokesman Mike McCurry suggested that the hack was not a serious matter because the messages "don't deal with national security matters." Yet the information details every step of the President's journey from his departure from Andrews Air Force Base to his arrival at the convention center where he was to speak -- clearly a breach of his personal security.

McCurry insists that every White House staff member who has access to classified information knows not to transmit any classified material by cellular phone, unsecured phone line, or beeper. It is precisely this lack of security in the national telecommunications infrastructure -- and the policies that contribute to it -- that Finkel hoped to publicize. "Everyone who is not committing criminal activity has a right to privacy," says Finkel.

The threat of computer-enabled crime prompted the FBI, the White House, and the Justice Department to push for the SAFE bill amendment. Many critics, including Dave Wagner, a telecommunications researcher at the University of California at Berkeley, questions the motives of FBI Director Louis Freeh, who he says is using the encryption issue to extend the FBI's mandate beyond its proper role of criminal investigation and prosecution.

Wagner contends that the benefits of preventing crime by using encryption to protect information "far outweigh the risks of not using it." This view is apparently shared by the House Commerce Committee, which shot down the SAFE amendment by a vote of 35 to 16. The export relief provisions of the original bill were passed intact.

IDC Research Manager Ted Julian believes that the struggle between law enforcement and encryption advocates will be forced into compromise by businesses that don't trust third-party escrow strategies, but favor message recovery systems. With the development of public encryption protocols like PGP and the popularity of encryption research, Julian warns that government attempts at limiting encryption is like "trying to shove the genie back in the bottle."