Dr. Dobb's Journal August 1998
Ron Rivest freely admits that his new method for protecting the privacy of messages, chaffing and winnowing (discussed here in June and by Bruce Schneier in a DDJ online op/ed), is as much about politics as technology. Rivest is concerned about the risks involved in giving law enforcement a back door to confidential data. He's not alone in that concern.
And he's not alone in believing that those of us who know something about technology need to get more political.
Richard Brandt, in the June 1998 issue of Upside, makes an impassioned plea for tech companies to lobby Washington about issues of importance to the industry. I think there's at least as much need for tech people to nag and educate Washington about technical issues that matter to everyone. Despite Brandt's highly original assertion that most politicians are not stupid, it's clear that for the most part they are dismally ill informed about technology issues. As Mike Godwin of the Electronic Frontier Foundation says, "Much of what people are told about cyberspace is wrong, and...frightening." Much of what politicians think they know about technology is wrong, and they're passing laws based on it. Educating them won't make them any less corrupt, but it would reduce the amount of merely ignorant technology policy and legislation. And we've seen a lot of that.
The folks at Microsoft are taking Brandt's advice and lobbying more lately. You can hardly blame them. Today, Microsoft is the biggest political contributor among tech companies. The real surprise is that, a year ago, it wasn't.
So maybe we should all get a little more political. But if we do, we should exercise better judgment than Netscape, which recently hired Robert Bork as a lobbyist.
Netscape wanted a well-known conservative, I guess, but there are better choices. You may remember Robert Bork as the conservative Supreme Court nominee ruthlessly savaged by Democrats in his confirmation hearings. That was brutal, but if that's all you remember, you don't know the real Robert Bork.
Let me tell you about the real Robert Bork.
During the Watergate investigation, Archibald Cox, the Special Prosecutor appointed to investigate the Watergate hotel break-in and coverup, was getting a little too close to the truth of Nixon's involvement in the affair. He was calling for the surrender of tapes of certain conversations that had occurred in the Oval Office. Nixon, suspecting that he would be finished if he turned over the tapes, took the offensive and ordered Attorney General Elliot Richardson to fire Cox. This was too much for Richardson, who told the President that he couldn't, in good conscience, do that. That same day, he resigned his post as Attorney General.
Nixon then turned to Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus with the same order. Ruckelshaus also refused, resigning later that day. It wasn't until eight o'clock that night that Nixon finally found someone willing to do his dirty work. The Solicitor General (cum acting Attorney General in the wake of the resignations) followed orders and fired Cox and shut down the Special Prosecutor's office.
The press called it the Saturday Night Massacre.
The Solicitor General's name was Robert Bork.
Nixon and Bork didn't get away with it. Congress introduced 22 bills of impeachment and the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that Nixon had to turn over the tapes. On those tapes, we hear the President of the United States suggesting raising a million dollars to buy the silence of the Watergate burglars. The tapes that Nixon and Bork tried to suppress brought down the Presidency.
Today, challenging the President of the United States is no big deal. Another former Solicitor General, Kenneth Starr, has been making a career of it. But Richardson and Ruckelshaus, two principled men who resigned rather than carry out an order they knew was wrong, paid a steep political price, and are little remembered today.
Robert Bork, Tricky Dick's hatchetman, is still with us. He doesn't have to be with Netscape. There are plenty of fine, principled conservatives who would be happy to lobby for Netscape. The company should fire Bork like he fired Archibald Cox.
--Michael Swaine