M.R. EPIC is the Electronic Privacy an Information Center. We began in the spring of 1994 over the issue of the clipper encryption proposal. The White House announced in January it planned for encryption where it gave gov't the ability to hold the keys for all private communication. That seemed a bad idea, we went to many of the leading cryptographers, Phil Zimmerman, Whit Diffie, David Chaum. We wrote a letter that was signed by 40 people to the president, asking the he withdraw clipper. We posted the letter on the Internet and people wrote to us and said they would like to sign the letter too. Over the course of about 2 months we had 50,000 signatures in support of that letter. It became a petition, we delivered it to the White House in April 1994 and announced the creation of EPIC. So that was our start.

P.A. How many people work at EPIC?

M.R. Well there are 3 of us who work very hard (laugh). David Sobel is our chief council, he conducts much of the litigation. He does the freedom of information act cases, which is how we get classified documents, scan them and put them on the net. He also works on our web site. He and I were both involved in the communications decency act litigation in Philadelphia.

Dave Banisar is also a lawyer. He does alot of our grassroots organizing and publishes our alerts and our privacy bulletin. He is probably the closest thing that we have to a genuine hacker in the office. He tells me he is still wanted for some federal offenses but he won't be more specific then that. So I don't know what crimes he has really committed perhaps he's just boasting.

P.A. How is the occupation financed?

M.R. We are financed from three different groups. We get money from civil liberties and civil rights foundations, the type of private charities that would traditionally support civil liberties work. We get some money from the computer industry, and we get some money from individuals who contribute donations.

S.R. There is a parallel to the EFF with your activities but I think you are more politically involved.

M.R. Yes, we are sort of the day laborer. EFF was almost like a meteor, they raced across the sky a couple of years ago and attracted a lot of attention, and to their credit. I think it did a lot of good work and raised a lot of public awareness about these issues. I have been involved in these issues for about 15 years now. I actually helped Mitch Kapor when he founded the EFF and wrote their mission statement.

P.A. With the EFF in Europe there have been some criticism about the free-mason J.P. Barlow and his messianic passion for the myth of 'world governments', and rumors concerning EFF's commitments with gov't institutions, about the resources they are getting from them. On the other hand in USA we find groups like the cypherpunks for example Timothy May. How do you see these different poles?

M.R. We try to work together. There is a risk, there are not many of us you know so you don't want to make enemies with to many people, even though you may disagree sometimes. My own feeling, of course, is you always have the right to disagree on matters of policy. We had a sharp disagreement with the EFF over the FBI wiretap proposal in 1994, we felt very deeply that this was a just a wretched plan. It was also ironic because at the same time the US was working to liberalize and deregulate the telecommunications environment. The FBI was sort of running right back in and saying we were going to make sure that everything is designed for wiretapping. This seemed just absurd. We fought very, very hard and spent a lot of late nights. We were also in the middle of the freedom of information act cases as we were getting reports from the FBI and we could not find the evidence for the legislation.

The EFF felt that it was necessary to pass some bill, they said they would get some privacy safeguards as an exchange. You know that was the way Washington worked. For myself I have lived in Washington for the past 15 years and I have seen Washington works quite well when some people stand up and simply say we are not going to put up with this. So we had a real battle with them over that issue.

P.A. Considering remailers and Cypherpunks...

M.R. I don't agree with a lot of things that Tim May says, myself I'm not an anarchist. Tim May has a right to be. I think that the government can and should be held accountable. I think Tim thinks there should be no government.

As for anonymous remailers and techniques for privacy we are in complete support. If the Cypherpunks came up with code tomorrow that gave everyone their own privacy you know we would defend their rights. We defended Phil Zimmerman when no one else would. Phil was looking at prosecution and everyone was saying "its controversial law, enforcement has rights..." and all this other nonsense. I said "That's ridiculous".

P.A. We know remailers are one of the first targets of censorship. We have seen what has happened with Scientology's litigation in Finland.

M.R. We have a page at EPIC it is called "practical privacy tools" anything that is on the net that we know about, be it PGP for mail or for voice or for anonymous remailers we want people to know about it. For myself I have felt that the best strategy is to be persistent. We just keep going and it drives people crazy.

S.R. You don't actually see any consumer rights activists at this conference at all. They actually invite North Americans here to present this counter culture. There are such groups in Europe but the organizers seem not aware to them. How do you feel on this point?

M.R. Well its very peculiar of course, in some ways we fill a vacuum because there is no formal privacy agency in the United States. So we sort of operate as a government in hiding I guess. A shadow privacy agency. I have been very pleased in the past few months to work with other organizations on international efforts. We were in Paris three weeks ago as part of the global Internet Liberty Coalition. The AUI in Paris is an active user association. There weren't many other groups that attended but several signed on to our resolution in support of encryption.

I think you're going to see more activity in Europe as more Internet issues spread out. This encryption debate that we have been having has been largely confined to the United States but I think that is going to change.

S.R. The original clipper chip issues seem to be a publicity/turning point of the Internet and on-line services. Though for the past 15 years there has been an on-line industry of name trading and database dealing like Equifax, Trans Union and others. Do you see a merging of the two?

M.R. I don't know if there is a merging. You know people say "Are you anti government or anti business?" I say "No, we are pro privacy." When John Borking comes up and gives a good talk on behalf of the data protection office in the Netherlands about technologies of privacy, my attitude is, I wish more governments were like that.

Regarding Equifax they are not responsive. You know these industries are very arrogant. I mean their attitude is, "we need not be held accountable, laws need not apply to us, and people who criticize us don't understand us." It is extraordinary arrogance for an individual to take that attitude. Government would just laugh.

S.R. How tight is an Equifax with the government?

M.R. I don't know about tight. Equifax doesn't have contracts per se with the gov't at least, not that I'm aware of in the US. I don't know if there are any financial arrangements. On the other hand they are very powerful politically. When anyone is talking about privacy legislation there is always a lobbyist from Equifax who comes in and explains, "We have all these employees we pay these taxes etc. We don't need any privacy laws."

S.R. I find this very interesting all these dealings of names. It is almost a commodity.

M.R. Well it is a commodity. You know I made several proposals this morning. One I knew would be controversial a lot of people I respect in Europe do not agree with the view that people should be compensated with the sale of personal data. They say that it is commodification, its selling a part of yourself. Privacy is a human rights issue.

I feel as strongly as they do that it is a human rights issue. But of course you already have these markets and the data is already being sold. So unless you can find another way to control those markets I think that this is the obvious solution.

P.A. Can you give us some high lights of the Clipper II strategy?

M.R. We were joking recently when this proposal came out that this was Clipper with a new coat of paint. You know it really didn't change very much. They made it look a little prettier. The technical specifications I still don't understand them. The IBM paper on it is really quite confusing. They say its not key escrow, its key recovery, they say its split among parties of your choosing, no requirement of government certification and it goes on and on. It's sort of like walking through quicksand. When you ask the question what is the purpose? What is behind this proposal? What are you trying to do? They will say under their breath "To preserve the gov'ts ability to intercept wire communications." That's Clipper. That's always been Clipper. That's where this debate began. Actually I think it's some measure of our success that we have been able after two and a half years to keep pushing and pushing and pushing and they are moving..... You know the trade representative of the United States Mickey Kantor publishes an article in the NY Times defending this and immediately everyone responds saying that he is being ridiculous he doesn't know what he is talking about.

I think that's great (laugh)

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