Interim Response from Philip Zimmermann 305
Overreaction to Washington Post ArticleIt seems that my recent clarification of how I was represented in the 21 September Washington Post article has itself created a deluge of harsh criticism of the Washington Post and the reporter who wrote the article.
People seem to be assuming the Washington Post is part of some grand conspiracy to restrict the availability of strong cryptography. I would like to say that this is an overreaction and a misinterpretation on the part of these critics.
I believe this was an honest misunderstanding by the people at the Post, and I never meant to imply in my previous clarification that this was done on purpose or with any malicious intent. On the contrary, I believe the Post worked hard to be fair in the story and had the best of intentions when they ran it.
Further, I'd like to say that all the individual facts and quotes were reported correctly. But the Post connected the dots in a slightly different way to conclude that I was feeling guilty even though I was simply feeling grief and anger just like everyone else since the attacks occurred. Overall, I thought the article was fine except for that one line that says I was "overwhelmed with guilt."
My purpose for sending out my original clarification was not to criticize the Post but to assure everyone that I am still standing firm on my convictions that PGP and other strong encryption products should be available to the public, with no back doors.
Through the years of coverage the Post has given the issue of cryptography restrictions, I have never detected any bias at the Post to promote restrictions on crypto. In fact, if they have any bias at all, it seems to be in the other direction. They helped me when I needed to keep the Justice Department at bay in 1995. We will need them again in the coming weeks as we in the crypto community attempt to keep the freedoms we have, as legislators try to impose new restrictions on strong crypto.
I find this jihad of criticism of the Post to be inappropriate. I can easily tell from talking with the reporter that her intentions were good. It is grossly unfair to punish her with all this hate mail. It's embarrassing to me and damaging to her. If anyone in the world of journalism wants any further clarification from me on that reporter's competence or journalistic integrity, feel free to call me directly and I will explain it to you in more detail.
I am in London at a data security conference, without as much Internet access as I have at home, so I cannot keep writing about this matter for much longer. I hope this letter is enough to put this matter to rest.
Sincerely,
Philip Zimmermann-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: PGP 7.0.3iQA/AwUBO7ILqcdGNjmy13leEQLryACfffYuStFXNTC0aWnJStMEAWsbQSgAn0ID d2bqoxnEbABk+1V/edlzC84A =uBHG
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
use of word jihad (Score:1, Interesting)
jihad == troubled times/problems
(mod parent up) Re:hmm. (Score:3, Interesting)
The Lesson for today is (Score:4, Interesting)
The fact that some of the terrorists might have used PGP is not in itself surprising - they were planning an operation where secrecy is vital and thus they used a secure system - they could have as easily created some code known only to them so the method they used is somewhat irelevant.
The same goes for the planes, they were designed to transport people but they have lots of fuel and become a flying bomb in the wrong hands.
So do we ban planes and crypto software ?
Lets all take a step back from this and look at it in the cold light of day for a minute. Over reaction now will result in long term effects - the US govt has been against strong crypto for many many years - the block on exporting 129k encryption are a case in point - claiming that it might help people commit crimes and hide information, but these are ideas and codes and someone will get them.
So do we ban it ? Why ? isnt it simply arrogance for the US to think that no one else in the world can develop this stuff ? and theres always the secret code devised only for you.
The argument that they might have been able to find out about it is also bullshit, you could disguise this stuff in language so effecitevly you would never get close, so that invalidates that argument.
The fact is the government in the US and in other countries wants to control free access to information and prevent people from hiding it away - the attempts to stop crypto are aimed at their populations - to prevent people from hiding money and assetts, from opposing the government etc
The sacry thing is that as i see the patrotism grow in the US i see a government cracking down on elemental freedoms and toughening laws - computer crime, crypto, etc Whats next freedom of assembly, freedom of speech.
We all need to keep an eye and a ear on the world otherwise what we miss may cost is more than we can ever guess.
I don't understand the people that send... (Score:2, Interesting)
I think this was the right thing to do. Since people can't learn to control themselves. Maybe this will wake someone up.
He stated perfectly clearly in the old article that he liked the Post, and he thought it was a honest mistake. What more do you want?
Even if matters were otherwise, you are destroying for yourself by stooping down to the American election campaign level - ie mud pies.
"Jihad" (Score:4, Interesting)
I hold you in high regard for your principals and the contributions you have made to the freedom of speech. But I dont think you undersand the word correctly like most other people. I will urge you to watch the CNN's little docu on Islam. As mentioned, in the entire KORAN there are 5-6 references to the word....and mostly the mention is about the battle one fights with oneself!
Uneducated Moslems have been misled by this word. They have been betrayed by people with evil motives. One way the educated community can make a contribution to the cause of anti-terrorism is to really understand both sides of the story. Rather, three sides of the story: yours, mine and the real-hard-truth.
I switched to gpg.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Thank you (Score:4, Interesting)
I agree that security research is not cracking.
Cracking is not terrorism in most cases, but if you crack some critical systems, it can get people killed. And though it doesn't rise to near the level of terrorism where people are killed, crackers who cost lots of innocent people a lot of time and money just to make their point or for the fun of it are still scum.
if you don't take the time to properly secure your systems, you need to take some liability!
People who don't secure their systems should take some responsibility for their lack of action. I think liability is the wrong word, because to me it infers that they deserve to be hacked. They don't. They have a responsibility because their lack of security can allow their system to be used against others. Trusting people that don't lock up their valuables don't deserve to be robbed. People that choose not to arm themselves don't deserve to be attacked. Defence against many forms of attack, including cracking may very well be a good idea, but lack of it does not imply guilt on part of the victim.
I strongly support free speech. I think that crypto laws requiring back doors, or making crypto insecure for the common person are wrong, and would be ineffective in their goals.
As part of supporting free speech, I am strongly against malicious cracking. Worms, viruses, trojans and the like do a lot to harm innocent people who just want to get online but don't have a lot of technical knowledge. The internet is a great tool for free speech, and it shouldn't be kept from them just because they don't know how to properly secure their home computer from malicious attacks of others. If the govenment ends up passing harsh legislation which inhibits our freedom to protect such people, it is the crackers who deserve the lion's share of the blame, not the people who got cracked.
I understand that in order to improve security, security needs to be tested. I also understand that in order to get vulnerabilities fixed, that security issues need to be made public. The way they are made public could often be handled better though.
If you really wan to stir some feathers, then remind them of the declaration of independence - "But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security"
You may stir up some feathers with this, but I doubt you'll help your cause. I agree that as a last resort, revolt is actually a responsibility of an american citizen. But only as a last resort, and only for the good of the country.
I realize that I made some comparison between terrorism and cracking in this post, and I want to state that I don't want to trivialize the problem of terrorism with this. Terrorisn is crime that far outshadows cracking. Malicious cracking is more of a petty terrorism in which lives aren't lost.
Lawmakers should learn from history (Score:4, Interesting)
Put backdoors on current cryptography programs, and you will ensure that only the criminals have real crypto. For more information, see The Code Book [amazon.com].
Media and conspiracy (Score:5, Interesting)
No, it's not a conspiracy, but it is a symptom of a much deeper problem. The fact remains that the paper blatantly misrepresented Phil's opinions in order to further the current agenda of cracking down on civil liberties. This distortion is not a coincidence, but it's not deliberate either. In fact, it's scarier than that. People who are sufficiently indoctrinated hear what they want to.
We don't need any controlling evil mastermind to produce the appearance of a conspiracy. All we need is a set of implicit and unstated tendancies where most people do what they think ought to be done, and the mass moves inexhorably in a particular direction, irrespective of a few free thinkers trying to throw a spanner in the works. This group concensus serves the interest of those in power (the rich, via corporations, media - which is corporate owned, and politicians - who are also corporate owned), and pushes the rest of the population in that direction.
Mainstream media is even more laughably distorted than normal at the moment. Suddenly the media is full of convenient statistics "80% of US population favors back-doors in encryption". And what percentage of the US population has any idea what the hell that means ? What was the queston "Do you favor laws that make it harder for terrorists to communicate in private ?" or "Should it be illegal for people to try to stop others from monitoring their communication ?"
Corporations and politicians have a vested interest in eliminating free speach from the population. They don't want you talking to each other, they want you listening to them. They definitely don't want you saying stuff to each other without them being able to monitor it and punish you for saying stuff that makes them uncomfortable. The real reasons for the desire to restrict and monitor may not even be apparant to the "group mind", but everyone has a huge capacity for self-delusion.
The media is just as accurate about other stuff. They laud George Jr's "bravery" without a trace of irony, like the jester in the Holy Grail "When danger reared its ugly head,
He bravely turned his tail and fled...." Meanwhile the cowardly terrorists were cowardly
giving their lives for their beliefs. Fanatical assholes, sure, but cowardly ?
The distortion is much worse than you think. The entire language is adjusted in a thoroughly Orwellian fashion. When people on our side die, the "terrorists" cause the "murder of innocent, men, women and children". Fine, this is accurate. However, when we do start beating up on Afghanistan. "Military commanders" will replace "terrorists" and "inevitable collateral damage during surgical strikes" will replace "bombing civilans". It's very difficult to reason about something when the terms are properly loaded.
The language molesters will be hard at work over the next few months. The funny thing is that when we hear blatant distortions in the other direction, (eg "The great satan") we laugh at the stupidity and talk about how these people have been brainwashed into believing all sorts of nonsense. Yeah, "they" hate us because they're jealous and they're victims of brainwashing and propoganda. Meanwhile, we're going to destroy civil liberties, escalate corporate welfare (through "defense" spending), slaughter innocent civilians and risk our own soldiers fighting people across the world who previously had no serious quarrel with us, because we're all well informed and logical.
== hammer seller? (Score:3, Interesting)
Same was dynamite, Nobel also thought of the constructive things when inventing it, like mining etc. but there are also people that will use dynamite to blow up other things than rocks.
Personally I think different for things created only for pure destruction. Like rockets, to a limited degree some kind of guns etc.
But also there history made sometimes funny turns. Take the LASER in example, when this technology came up people only thought of them using as super longrange weapons, and got quite funding for this purpose. Now look today, LASERs are used for everything, from construction computers, correcting teeth and eyes, meassuring stars, etc. etc. but one application they failed miserable as weapons themselfs.
Re:hmm. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Philip why are you interested in cryptography?? (Score:2, Interesting)
It seems that no-one understands you anyway so you might as well send everything as plain ASCII!
Bah - who modded that down! It was a joke!!
Jeez someone got out of bed the wrong side today..
Re:hmm. (Score:2, Interesting)
As someone who deals routinely with journalists, I'd have to say your version is the J-school fantasyland version.
For an illustrative example of the real world version, click here [netrinsics.com] (story of Time Asia hiring me to do a hatchet job on Bill Gates).
I've had a CNN reporter based in Beijing complain point blank that China coverage was for all practical purposes written in Atlanta.
I could go on with similar stories for pages and pages.
Re:A better approach (Score:4, Interesting)
Misquote (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Thank you (Score:2, Interesting)
Second, I am curious to know wtf pampered teenagers have to do with anything? If your implication is that I am a pampered teenager, fraid you are a few years too late
Also is it sacrificing their lives for the ideals of freedom, or sacrificing them to save the lives of others. (ie if you are refering to the sacrifice made by those passengers, then I would argue it was more the latter). In case you were wondering what the difference was:
- The ideals of freedom are subjective, and to a certain extent are based on the ideals of the society which you are brought up in. Personally speaking I don't necessarily agree with the all the ideals of the society I have been brought up, in spite of it being considered one of the more free, but I have work to do, so I am not going to go into that now.
- sacrificing your life for others is a moral decision, one which I like to think I would be willing to do , but will not until (if) I am put in that situation.
anyway, that's enough rambling, I am not sure if I have made a particularly coherent point, or just wasted 10 minutes, but it makes me feel better
not the washington post recently (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:hmm. (Score:3, Interesting)
That's why it pays to read what he actually said:
If anyone is to blame for the change it's the editors, not the writer. And the editors are probably pretty stressed right now. I doubt they were being malicious.
You may have heard of the principle "don't attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity". Maybe that should be changed to include stress, exhaustion, and emotional turmoil.
Happened to Bill Maher too... (Score:2, Interesting)
He made a statement that was an indirect slam against the Clinton Administration, but some right-wing shock jocks took it as an attack on the US military and Bush. Maher and his advertisers have been hammered with hate mail from the "Free Republic" types and Limbots ever since.
What Maher basically said was that it would be "cowardly" of us to lob cruise missiles at terrorist camps from 2000 miles away, like we did in 1998. He was calling the decision makers (i.e. Clinton) cowards, not the military.
But right-wing nuts reacted to the second-hand information they got from fellow wing-nuts like Mike Gallagher and went ballistic.
Very much the same way that slashdotters went ballistic on the WP.
Bill Maher has always been very pro-military on PI, but because he is impartial and sometimes takes the leftward position on some issues (drug war, death penalty), the conservatives in this country saw it as an opportunity for an attack. Never mind that he was implicitly criticizing their arch-enemy Clinton...he is sometimes liberal, so he must be taken off the air.
Heroes of Peace and Freedom in year 2061 schools.. (Score:2, Interesting)
Let us now all have a week of careful meditation on the pain and suffering endured during the Greatest Dark Age of history, before all humans learned to wish only the Peace of God upon each other. Once we have all passed a week thinking upon these matters, our class will resume for a discussion of how similar misunderstandings and applications of the now-debunked "greater good" system of pseudoethics were also being perpetrated, to various degrees of horror, by governments and organizations outside the former United States of America.
Did they use Crypto or code talk? (Score:1, Interesting)
www.cnn.com/2001/US/09/27/inv.rules.engagement/in
One of the last comments was "The source said that a translator helped decipher the document, but some of it "was unintelligible." " I began to think of our use of the Navajo language to allow our Marines to communicate without fear of Japanese code breakers listening in on our plans. Here is a URL about the code talkers :
wae.com/webcat/navajos.htm [wae.com]
With the concern about the law adjustments that DOJ is proposing here is a question. Did those people use code talk against us?
NSA,CIA,and FBI could listen in all day but if they developed their own "code talk" similar to what the Navajos did during their training no amount of encryption regulation on this planet would keep someone from doing this. My understanding of what the Navajos did was to take common everyday words they used in their native language and assign them meening. From what I remember in reading about them they had all just finished Marine Boot camp and they got together as a group and decided what navajo words meant what Marine words. They never wrote anything down and did not have any non-native speakers help them develop the code talk.
What would prevent the terrorists from doing something similar in a cave in Afghanistan?
If this is found to be true would that not mean that all of the lawmakers scrambling for added pressures on encryption technologies are wrong?
who should really be overwhelmed with a feeling... (Score:2, Interesting)
not sure about Zimmerman, but here is a brief list of those who should be overwhelmed with a feeling of guilt:
1. Those responsible for making the american foreign policy. Seems like we are fighting with monsters we've created in a first place (bin Laden and Saddam Hussein). Clearly this policy has no long-term strategic goals.
2. CIA and FBI. I'm not going to comment a lot on this item.
3. Those responsible for Airtravel security. Airport facilities at Logan are complitely inadequate. Apparently the rules of engagements with hijackers aren't adequate either. What amazes me is that the possibility of such events was considered a long time ago, and yet the old outdated rules were kept in place.
Now suddenly cryptography and Zimmerman are scapegoats. Give me a break.