With Clipper/Skipjack, there is a lot that the combined forces of government will be able to do to monitor all aspects of your behavior without getting a warrant. Between the monitoring capacities of the NSA, the great data-sieves of the Department of Energy, and the fact that, in use, each chip would continually broadcast the whereabouts of its owner, the government would soon be able to isolate just about every perpetrator among us. I assume you’re neither a drug-user nor a terrorist, but are you ready for this? Is your nose that clean? Can it be prudent to give government this kind of corrupting power?
Predictor: Barlow, John Perry
Prediction, in context:In an “Electronic Frontier” column he wrote for Communications of the ACM [Association for Computing Machinery] in 1993, John Perry Barlow comments on the possibility of the government enforcing newly developed policies regarding Digital Telephony, which would allow the government to “tap” into communications on the Internet, possibly intercepting private citizens’ conversations: ”It’s the enemies they can’t bomb who have them worried, and they are certainly correct in thinking that the communications of drug traffickers and whatever few terrorists as may actually exist are more open to their perusal than would be the case in a world where even your grandmother’s phone conversations were encrypted. And Clipper or no Clipper, such a world would be closer at hand if manufacturers hadn’t known that any device that embodies good encryption would not be fit for export. But with Clipper/Skipjack, there is a lot that the combined forces of government will be able to do to monitor all aspects of your behavior without getting a warrant. Between the monitoring capacities of the NSA, the great data-sieves of the Department of Energy, and the fact that, in use, each chip would continually broadcast the whereabouts of its owner, the government would soon be able to isolate just about every perpetrator among us. I assume you’re neither a drug-user nor a terrorist, but are you ready for this? Is your nose that clean? Can it be prudent to give government this kind of corrupting power?”
Biography:John Perry Barlow helped found the Electronic Frontier Foundation in 1990 with WELL (Whole Earth ‘Lectronic Link) members Mitch Kapor and John Gilmore in direct response to a threat to free speech. Barlow’s was one of the loudest voices in the battle to keep the Internet unfettered while still encouraging that it become a tool available to everyone. (Advocate/Voice of the People.)
Date of prediction: October 1, 1993
Topic of prediction: Communication
Subtopic: Security/Encryption
Name of publication: Communications of the ACM
Title, headline, chapter name: A Plain Text on Crypto Policy
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
www.eff.org/Publications/John_Barlow_/HTML/plain_text_on_crypto.html
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Anderson, Janna Quitney