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SURFPUNK Technical Journal 002
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From: cocot@osc.versant.com (Doctor COCOT)
To: surfpunk@osc.versant.com (SURFPUNK Technical Journal)
Subject: [surfpunk-0002] CRYPT: John Gilmore sues the NSA
Keywords: surfpunk, Military Cryptanalysis, cryptography, NSA, FOIA
John Gilmore <gnu@toad.com> was the first software engineer
at Sun Microsystems. Or that's what I was once told.
This is in response to a question on the "pem-dev@TIS.COM"
mailing list, a list about privacy-enhanced mail standards,
which is supporting RSA public key encryption.
Those who claim to hold patents on the art of public key encryption
now allow free lisences for any academic, personal, or noncommercial
use of RSA. I'm thinking of using it in the SURFPUNK project
at some point, as we move into cyberspace.
-- Dr Cocot
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From: gnu@toad.com
Subject: Re: John Gilmore vs. NSA
Date: Sat, 28 Nov 92 23:23:24 -0800
To: shirey@mitre.org
Cc: pem-dev@TIS.COM, saag@TIS.COM, gnu@toad.com
Sender: pem-dev-relay@TIS.COM
In-Reply-To: <9211271355.AA29657@smiley.mitre.org.sit>
Message-Id: <9211290723.AA13480@toad.com>
I'm still on PEM-DEV, just pretty busy and backed-up on email.
The FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) case that the newspapers have
been reporting revolves around three documents authored or co-authored
by William F. Friedman. Two have been declassified, probably because
we found copies of them in public libraries. They are:
Military Cryptanalysis, Volume 3
Military Cryptanalysis, Volume 4
The third remains classified at this time, but NSA has said that they
will do a line-by-line classification review of it, because parts of it are
known (and admitted by NSA) to duplicate existing declassified material:
Military Cryptanalytics, Volume 3
Lambros D. Callimahos and William F. Friedman
We are looking for a copy of this document (or any other cryptography
document that was lawfully obtained and which the government will not
release to the public). If you know of someone who might have a copy
of this document, please forward this message to them. Don't tell me
or my lawyer (Lee Tien, tien@toad.com) about it -- let the document
holder do that. I suspect that there are copies in existence, but
probably most of them were not obtained lawfully. If their existence
was made known to us, NSA might demand this information in court and
we might be compelled to provide it. This would then allow the NSA
and Justice Department to contact the holders and demand that the
copies be returned, with a 10-year "espionage" sentence as club. So,
please contact us if you have a copy that was *lawfully* obtained,
otherwise we'll muddle on through without putting you in jeopardy.
By lawful I mean that you got a copy without violating any law. If
you secretly copied it when you worked for the Army, you don't
qualify. If you saw it in a library and copied it, you qualify. If
your Dad left it to you when he died, you qualify if *he* got it
lawfully. If the Army explicitly let you keep a copy when you left,
without putting any constraints on what you did with it, you qualify.
But be prepared to prove it.
Even if we can't find public copies of this third document, we are
looking for expert witnesses in cryptography *and* national security.
Traditionally NSA provides its own "experts" who tell tales of woe
about how the sky will fall if the documents are released. They were
well along in that process when they declassified the first two,
giving them a somewhat egg-faced demeanor. If you have a SECRET
clearance and the right experience to convince a judge that you can
evaluate the damage to the US national security that would be caused
by releasing portions of this cryptography textbook, please get in
touch.
Two issues that arose in the FOIA case remain unresolved. The first
is whether NSA has a pattern and practice of violating the Freedom of
Information Act by not responding to requesters within the time limits
specified in the law. If I file my taxes one day late, I get penalized.
But if the law says NSA has 10 days to respond, and they take 10 months,
they shrug it off and say "so sue us". I'm doing just that.
The second issue is whether the espionage laws, which make it a
Federal crime to distribute a classified document, are
unconstitutional on their face, because they limit citizens' freedom
of the press. If the laws had been written to only apply to
government employees, or to people who obtained documents unlawfully,
they might have a leg to stand on. But the Supreme Court has long
held that limitations on the right to publish must satisfy very tight
constraints -- and this law is very vague and all-encompassing. It
certainly appeared to encompass me, who got the docs from a library,
and I did not redistribute them for fear of prosecution. Creating
such fear has been held a violation of the First Amendment in several
cases. My suspicion is that NSA declassified the documents *so that*
it would be harder for us to press this issue. (Courts like to decide
the smallest set of issues they can get away with; if the espionage
law is now "moot" in our case, they may claim that the court should
ignore the potentially unconstitutional law because they backed off.
But that would leave them free to unconstitutionally threaten the next
victim.) We'll see what the judge thinks.
John Gilmore
gnu@toad.com
+1 415 903 1418 voicemail
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The SURFPUNK Technical Journal is a dangerous multinational hacker zine
originating near BARRNET in the fashionable western arm of the northern
California matrix. Quantum Californians appear in one of two states,
spin surf or spin punk. Undetected, we are both, or might be neither.
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