[109697] in Cypherpunks
Encryption
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Anonymous)
Thu Apr 1 23:34:04 1999
Date: Fri, 2 Apr 1999 06:20:17 +0200 (CEST)
From: Anonymous <nobody@replay.com>
To: cypherpunks@cyberpass.net
Reply-To: Anonymous <nobody@replay.com>
A key US senator said Wednesday he was going to introduce new
encryption legislation. But the proposal is likely to leave all
sides wanting more.
John McCain, the Arizona Republican who chairs the Senate's Commerce
Committee, painted the legislation as a compromise.
"This bill protects our national security and law enforcement
interests while maintaining the United States leadership role in
information technology," he said.
For years high-tech firms have struggled against the Clinton
administration's rules restricting the overseas sales of encryption
products, arguing that they doom American companies to second-place
finishes in the race to expand the e-commerce market.
McCain's bill relaxes the White House rules. But it does not remove
them.
"It's uninspired. It's a nonsolution if I've ever seen one," complains
Alex Fowler, a spokesman for the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Business lobbyists also offered faint praise. "The bill doesn't go as
far or as fast as the Security and Freedom through Encryption Act,"
said Ed Gillespie, executive director of Americans for Computer
Privacy.
Representative Robert Goodlatte (R-Virginia) is championing the SAFE
bill in the House, as he did with scant success last session. No
companion legislation has been introduced in the Senate.
Law enforcement lobbyists are hardly likely to support McCain's
proposal.
For years, US Department of Justice and FBI officials have pressed
for new federal laws making it a crime to distribute or sell
unapproved encryption products, including Web browsers and Eudora
plug-ins. FBI Director Louis Freeh convinced one House committee in
the last Congress to approve such a ban, and he has shown no signs
of changing his mind.
"I have not given up on encryption," Freeh told a Senate
appropriations committee in February.
"Law enforcement remains in unanimous agreement that the
continued widespread availability and increasing use of strong,
nonrecoverable encryption products will soon nullify our effective
use of court-authorized electronic surveillance and the execution of
lawful search and seizure warrants. The loss of these capabilities
will devastate our capabilities for fighting crime, preventing acts
of terrorism, and protecting the national security," Freeh said.
McCain's bill allows the export of encryption products with up to
64-bit length keys, an increase over current 56-bit limits.
It also creates an encryption export advisory board that would render
advice on export applications, though the Commerce Department would
make the final decisions. The new federal bureaucracy would be made
up of 12 members, with automatic representation from the CIA, NSA,
and the White House.
Although the text of the legislation has not been made public, its
biggest impact may be in showing McCain is softening his position
on encryption. Previously he was one of the Senate's most vocal
supporters of government-coerced key escrow, which would build
surveillance capability into software and hardware products. Now
he's hardly a friend of strong encryption, but he's no longer a
hardened adversary.
"The announcement is most notable because it represents a major shift
in positioning.... Senator McCain was previously a major supporter
of administration encryption policy and opponent of encryption relief
efforts," an analysis published Wednesday by the Center for Democracy
and Technology said.
