The prediction, in brief:

It would be folly to let the capability to do electronic surveillance be completely overridden by technology. It’s a much safer bet to put it into the system so that we can do it, to make sure that we have good procedural checks and laws to govern the use of that.

Predictor: Denning, Dorothy

Prediction, in context:

In a 1995 article in CQ Researcher, Charles Clark quotes network security expert Dorothy Denning talking about the government’s attempts to maintain regulated amounts of surveillance on the Internet. Clark writes:”The Clinton administration’s effort to mediate between the virtues of privacy in communications and the tools needed for effective law enforcement took the form of the Clipper Chip, unveiled in 1993 by the National Security Agency and the National Institute of Standards and Technology. The Clipper unscrambles transmitted computer data to protect the privacy of the user, whose code can be unlocked only with a set of software ‘keys’ that only federal law-enforcement agencies could control. The decoding keys would be used rarely, designers said, and only with a court order issued under current wiretapping laws. Advocates of the Clipper Chip argued that ‘it would be folly to let the capability to do electronic surveillance be completely overridden by technology,’ says Dorothy Denning, a professor of computer science at Georgetown University. ‘It’s a much safer bet to put it into the system so that we can do it, to make sure that we have good procedural checks and laws to govern the use of that.'”

Biography:

Dorothy Denning was a professor and chair of Computer Science at Georgetown University in the 1990s, by which time she had been in the field of computer security and cryptography for two decades. Previous to her arrival at GU, she worked at Digital Equipment Corporation, SRI International and Purdue University. Her books include “Cryptography and Data Security” and “Information Warfare and Security.” She authored many Internet research studies. She was the first president of the International Association for Cryptologic Research. (Research Scientist/Illuminator.)

Date of prediction: June 1, 1995

Topic of prediction: Communication

Subtopic: Security/Encryption

Name of publication: CQ Researcher

Title, headline, chapter name: Regulating the Internet

Quote Type: Direct quote

Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://library.cqpress.com/cqresearcher/search.php

This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Anderson, Janna Quitney