If someone is planning a serious criminal conspiracy and is going to the trouble of using all kinds of fancy communications, the likelihood that they are going to go down to Radio Shack and buy the modem or buy the telephone that has stamped on it “approved by the NSA” is very slim. And what we are in fact trading off is the privacy rights of the vast majority of the population who are law-abiding citizens.
Predictor: Weitzner, Daniel J.
Prediction, in context:As a member of a special panel at a policy debate about the Clipper Chip sponsored in January 1995 by the Association of the Bar of the City of New York, Daniel Weitzner, deputy director of the Center for Democracy and Technology, said: ”This seems to be a choice between anarchy and order or apple pie and the devil. I want to just say again that I really do believe that this new technology creates new problems and new challenges; but to pretend that we can somehow make a choice to put all of those new challenges back in the bottle, that we can somehow erase from the Internet, erase from computer science textbooks that are all over the world, and erase from people’s brains the knowledge of how to do this kind of encryption is fantasy. And I think it is irresponsible policy making to turn a blind eye to all of the problems … If someone is planning a serious criminal conspiracy and is going to the trouble of using all kinds of fancy communications, the likelihood that they are going to go down to Radio Shack and buy the modem or buy the telephone that has stamped on it ‘approved by the NSA’ is very slim. And what we are in fact trading off is the privacy rights of the vast majority of the population who are law-abiding citizens who have no reason to submit themselves to a search in advance.”
Date of prediction: January 1, 1995
Topic of prediction: Communication
Subtopic: Security/Encryption
Name of publication: Panel Discussion on the Clipper Chip
Title, headline, chapter name: The Clipper Chip: Should the Government Control the Master Keys to Electronic Commerce?
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://swissnet.ai.mit.edu/6805/articles/clipper/ny-debate-jan-19-95.txt
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Anderson, Janna Quitney