With the growth of the Internet, a debate concerning what
access government intelligence
should be given to its operations erupted in the mid-1990s in the United
States. During this period, hacktivists
squashed the U.S. Clipper Proposal, which would have enabled governments to
monitor more easily the communications darting across the information
superhighway.
In brief, the Clipper Proposal was about an encryption chip
designed by the U.S. government that would enforce the use of the chip in all
devices that might use encryption—computers,
modems, telephones, and so on. Thus, the U.S. government could control the
encryption algorithm, giving it
the capability to decrypt any
recovered message.
See Also:
Algorithm; Decryption or Decipher; Encryption or Encipher; Hacktivism and
Hacktivists; Intelligence.
Porteous, S. Economic Espionage II. [Online, July, 1994.] Canadian Security
Intelligence Service (CSIS) Website. http://www.csis-scrs.gc.ca/eng/comment/
com46_e.html.