[117232] in Cypherpunks
Re: ACTION ALERT: Crypto Legislation
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (William H. Geiger III)
Sun Aug 29 12:40:21 1999
Date: Sun, 29 Aug 1999 12:22:52 -0400
Message-Id: <199908291622.MAA08013@domains.invweb.net>
From: "William H. Geiger III" <whgiii@openpgp.net>
To: Multiple recipients of list <cypherpunks@openpgp.net>
Reply-To: "William H. Geiger III" <whgiii@openpgp.net>
In <19990829150929.NZRU15925@alaptop.hotwired.com>, on 08/29/99
at 10:58 AM, Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com> said:
>Remember the folks at CDT cut a deal and supported CALEA. (CDT to Freeh:
>Glad we could work together, as Brock reported in a CWD.) Remember they
>supported a law restricting "harmful to minors" stuff online. Remember
>they said they had no objections to Clipper.
>The recent SAFE stuff should not be surprising.
>BTW SAFE would also derail current and future Bernstein suits.
I have just been checking my archives and I have seen several different
versions of text for SAFE over the past month. Does anyone have the actual
text of the versions that they will be voting on? There seems to be some
substantial differences from the version at:
http://cryptome.org/hr850rh.txt
and the version provided by the CDT:
http://www.cdt.org/legislation/106th/encryption/safe.pdf
Just looking the CDT version has a date on the document of Febuary 1999!!
The entire bill has been re-written since then. Either they are getting
sloppy or they really don't want anyone to know what is really in this
bill. It should be noted that the link is burried on thier website (you
have to goto the action page and then do the search on your
congress-critter, only then at the very bottom of the webpage is there a
small link to their incomplete and outdated version of the un-SAFE bill.
One glaring section that is missing is Section 14:
SEC. 14. FAILURE TO DECRYPT INFORMATION OBTAINED UNDER COURT ORDER.
Whoever is required by an order of any court to provide to the court
or any other party any information in such person's possession which has
been encrypted and who, having possession of the key or such other
capability to decrypt such information into the readable or comprehensible
format of such information prior to its encryption, fails to provide such
information in accordance with the order in such readable or
comprehensible form--
(1) in the case of a first offense under this section,
shall be imprisoned for not more than 5 years, or fined under
title 18, United States Code, or both; and
(2) in the case of second or subsequent offense under this
section, shall be imprisoned for not more than 10 years, or
fined under title 18 United States Code, or both.
There has been a long and ongoing thread on the ukcrypto mailing list
regarding court orders to decrypt messages. In the uk proposal it puts the
burden of proof on the accused to prove that he can not decrypt the
encrypted data when so ordered. It should be interesting to see how the
courts here in the US would handle this? If you fail to decrypt when
ordered to do so what is the burdon of proof that at the time of the order
you have the ability to do so?
Hey Declan perhaps this would make an interesting article for your
readers. :)
--
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William H. Geiger III http://www.openpgp.net
Geiger Consulting Cooking With Warp 4.0
Author of E-Secure - PGP Front End for MR/2 Ice
PGP & MR/2 the only way for secure e-mail.
OS/2 PGP 5.0 at: http://www.openpgp.net/pgp.html
Talk About PGP on IRC EFNet Channel: #pgp Nick: whgiii
Hi Jeff!! :)
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