Massachusetts Institute of Technology
MIT 6.805/6.806/STS085: Ethics and Law on the Electronic Frontier
Fall Semester, 2003
Class 5 -- Week of class on October 2
Fourth Amendment, Part 2
The class has moved: the new room is 34-303.
Slides from Hal's lecture (PDF)
We'll begin with some backgound in encryption technology and in the
controversy over regulation of encryption. Then we'll discuss the
Digital Telephony Bill (CALEA) and legal issues in government access
to stored communications and pen register information.
Readings to do before class
- Background on CALEA and on the controversy over encryption:
- Skim the class archive on The
Encryption Controversy, 1994-1997. You need not read any of the
included papers and articles, except for the Risks report, as
noted below.
- 1994 House Judiciary Report
on CALEA (read the whole thing)
- The Risks of Key
Recovery, Key Escrow, and Trusted Third-Party Encryption, by (Hal
Abelson, Ross Anderson, Steven Bellovin, Josh Benaloh, Matt Blaze,
Whitfield Diffie, John Gilmore, Peter Neumann, Ronald Rivest, Jeffrey
Schiller, and Bruce Schneier. This paper cautions that key recovery
for government access (where keys must be made accessible to
law-enforcement on short notice without the knowledge of the
user) has inherent risks and expenses that are not well
understood, and advises against rapid, wide-scale deployment of such
systems. Read just the preface and skim the rest. The preface is a
1998 update to the bulk of the paper (written in 1997).
- Legal background:
- Smith v. Maryland, 442 U.S. 735 (1979)
- US v. Miller, 425 U.S. 435 (1976)
- 18 USC 2703(d): Required disclosure of customer communications
or records (Requirements for Court Order)
To do after class
Don't forget that there will be a new rotisserie writing assignment
issued Friday morning.