"Thank you, Senator Deere, and committee members. I am honored to have a chance to speak to you here today. As a preface to my remarks, I think that a brief history of security and privacy from a government perspective may be in order. One of the reasons we are here today is due to a succession of events that since the introduction of the computer have shaped an ad hoc anarchism, a laissez-faire attitude toward privacy and security. Rather than a comprehensive national policy, despite the valiant efforts of a few able Congressmen, the United States of America has allowed itself to be lulled into technical complacency and indifference. Therefore, I will, if the committee agrees, provide a brief chronological record."
"I for one would be most interested," said Senator Deere. "It appeared that this morning our speakers assumed we were more knowledgeable that we are. Any clarifications will be most welcome." The crowd agreed silently. Much of the history was cloaked in secrecy.
The distinguished Ted Hammacher was an accomplished orator, utilizing the best that Washington diplomatic-speak could muster. At 50 years old, his short cropped white hair capped a proper military bearing even though he had maintained a civilian status throughout his Pentagon associations. "Thank you madam chairman." He glanced down at the well organized folder and turned a page.
"Concerns of privacy can be traced back thousands of years with perhaps the Egyptian pyramids as the first classic example of a brute force approach towards privacy. The first recorded at- tempts at disguising the contents of a written message were in Roman times when Julius Caesar encoded messages to his generals in the field. The Romans used a simple substitution cipher where one letter in the alphabet is used in place of another. The cryptograms found in the Sunday paper use the same techniques. Any method by which a the contents of a message is scrambled is known as encryption."
The CNN producer maintained the sole camera shot and his atten- tion on Ted Hammacher. He missed Senator Rickfield and his aid reappear on the dais. Rickfield's eyes penetrated Nancy Deere who imperceptibly acknowledged his return. "You should not over- step your bounds," Rickfield leaned over and said to her. "You have five years to go. Stunts like this will not make your time any easier."
"Senator," she said to Rickfield as Hammacher spoke. "You are obviously not familiar with the procedures of Senate panel proto- col. I was merely trying to assist the progress of the hearings in your absence, I assure you." Her coolness infuriated Rick- field.
"Well, then, thank you," he sneered. "But, now, I am back. I will appreciate no further procedural interference." He sat up brusquely indicating that his was the last word on the subject. Unaware of the political sidebar in progress, Hammacher contin- ued.
"Ciphers were evolved over the centuries until they reached a temporary plateau during World War II. The Germans used the most sophisticated message encoding or encryption device ever devised. Suitably called the Enigma, their encryption scheme was nearly uncrackable until the Allies captured one of the devices, and then under the leadership of Alan Turing, a method was found to regularly decipher intercepted German High Command orders. Many historians consider this effort as being instrumental in bringing about an end to the war.
"In the years immediately following World War II, the only per- ceived need for secrecy was by the military and the emerging intelligence services, namely the OSS as it became the modern CIA, the British MI-5 and MI-6 and of course our opponents on the other side. In an effort to maintain a technological leadership position, the National Security Agency funded various projects to develop encryption schemes that would adequately protect govern- ment information and communications for the foreseeable future.
"The first such requests were issued in 1972 but it wasn't until 1974 that the National Bureau of Standards accepted an IBM pro- posal for an encryption process known as Lucifer. With the assistance of the NSA who is responsible for cryptography, the Data Encryption Standard was approved in November of 1976. There was an accompanying furor over the DES, some saying that the NSA intentionally weakened it to insure that they could still decrypt any messages using the approved algorithm.