Das FBI h”rt mit

(Reprinted w~th permi~sson fronI lEEE
Institutc, Nov. 1992 ("do u~it1' it as you
wish. Gran~er¯) fand forwarded ~y Pro-
fessor Lance ]. Hoffman, EEICS, The
&eorge Washington [Jniversity, Was-
hington, D. C. abos21 (20H 994-4955

hoffman~!sea'.g~uu. edul)

A ¯Vie~opo~nt ~ piece in
The Institute, November 1992
Bulanc~ng National Interest&

The September/October issue of The In-
stitute carried a front page story repor-
ting that the Federal Bureau of Inve-
stigation ifi promoting legislation that
would require all telephone systems to
be designed in such a way that they catt
be wiretapped by law enforcement offl-
cial~. The argument is that wiretapping
is a key tool in much of law enforc~
ment, particularly iu fields such as drugs,
racketeering, conspiracy and white collar
crime, and that unless care is taken in
. the design of future telecommunications
systems, this tool may l~ecome difficult
or impo~sibl~ to exercise. To solve this
problem the FBI is promoting le~s;islation
that would establish design requirements
on ~ture telephone systems. Not sur~
prisingly, civil liberties groups and tele-
phone con:~panies are reported to be less
thar~ enthusiastic.

While interesting an`1 important in its
own right, this controversy is perhaps
even m',re iml~ortant ab a symbol of a
broader set of conflicts between a nurn-
ber of important na,tional interests. As a
l ountry, we want to promote:

	* IT~dividua1 privacy (inelnding the right
o$ ~itizens and other resideuts of the U.S.
to keep personal records private, hold
priYate communications with others, and
move about without being "tracked".)

	* Security for organizations (including
protection of financial transactions, and
the ability to keep corporate data, plans,
and communications confi`lential.)

	* Effective domestic law cnforeement (in-
.clnding the ability to perform surveil-
lance of legitimately identified suspects,
and the ability to audit and reconstruct
fraudalent acti~ties.)

	* ERective international intclligence ga~
theFing (including the ability to monilor
the plans and activities of organizations
abroad that may pose a threat to the
U.S. or to other peacefnl stateg~-and pem
ples.)

	* Secure world-wide reliable communica-
tions [or U.S. diplumats and the military,
for U.S. business, and [or IJ.S. citizens in
their activities all araund the world (in-
clnding the ability to maintain and gain
access to secure, reliable, communicati-
ons rhannels.)

~ .

Just as with most of our society's other
fundamental objectives, these objectives
are in conflict You can not maximize
them all berause getting more of some
involvc~ giving up some of others. A
~ynamic tension IIIUSt be created that
lceeps the variaus objectives properly b~
lanced. That ~vcially optimal point of
balance n~ay change gradually over time
as world conditions and our saciety's va-

lnes evolve.

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An electrical engineer wEn thinks for a There are several crganizations that
moment about the problem of achieYin6 should be working hardcr on these is-
any part~calar specified balance among sues. On the goverurneut side the Tclc-
the vanaus ob~jectives I have listed will communication and Computing Techno-
qu~ckly conclude that communications logies Program in the Office of Techno-
a~d ~nformat~on technologt design choi- logy Assesament should be doing more
ces l~e at the heart of t}~e way in which systematic studies of these tradeoffs to
many of the necessa~y tradeoffs will be help inform the Congress; The Natio-
made. We would like easy portable com- nal Telecommunications and Inform~
mun~cations for all, but doing that in tion Administration in the Department
a way that allows people to keep their of CoIIlmerce (or some appropriate inter-
le~t~mate travels private poses signifi- agenc~r committee) should be doing si-
cant des~gn challenges. Banks and other milar studies to develop more coherent
l~usinesses would like secure encrypted and comprehensive executive brA~ch po-
comm~nications world-wide, hnt promo- licy; and the Office of Policy aud Plans
ting the general availability of such tech- - ~_ ;

nologies all around the world severelyl'l - ~'

complicates the sigual intelligence ope- =1~1~ 1~1~r~~
ratione of intelligence organizations. Ul~l5

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The tr~ubling thi~g about the FBI's le~j:
gielative proposals is t~ot that they are
being made, but that we lack a brna-
der institutional context within which
to evaluate them. In making such choi-
ces, we need to look systematically at

	;'Q44'2,'	~aR the legitimate interests tkat are at

stake in telecommunications and infor-
mation technology design choices, con-
sirier f.he ways in which technr~logy an~l
the world are eYolving, and ir~tegrate all
these considerations to arrive at a rea~o-
ned balance. In the old days7 if things got
too far out of lin0 in some balance (for
example? between freedam of the press
and protection against liable), the courts
simply readjusted things and we went
on. To~ay, and increasingly in the future,
with many of these halances hard wired
into the ba,sic design of our information
and communic~tion systems, it may be
much harder to readjust the bal;~nce af-
ter the fact.

~' ~'nd~lellb~

KEEP Y
]2127~]
CONVERSATIONS
UNC[ASSIFIED

in the Federal Commurlications Commis-
s~on (which ix an independent regula-
to~r agency not directly subject to e~e- !
cutive branch policy) should be giving
these issues more attention so it can
bettcr 6upport the Co~nmissioners when
they confront such tradeoffs. On the nan-
government side, the Offlce of Compu-
ter and Information Tcchnology at the

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