[117236] in Cypherpunks
Re: ACTION ALERT: Crypto Legislation
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Declan McCullagh)
Sun Aug 29 13:59:41 1999
Date: Sun, 29 Aug 1999 13:40:22 -0400
To: John Young <jya@pipeline.com>, abd@cdt.org
From: Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>
Cc: cypherpunks@cyberpass.net
In-Reply-To: <199908291618.MAA23834@smtp5.mindspring.com>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Message-Id: <19990829174311.PWVA15925@alaptop.hotwired.com>
Reply-To: Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>
And on SAFE's likely negative impact on the Bernstein case... Remember, any
legislation that lets individuals post crypto freely probably wouldn't
survive a presidental veto. Thus the inevitable and thoroughly unpleasant
slide towards "compromise" begins... I think Solveig also mentioned some of
this in her policy analysis at cato.org. --Declan
http://www.pathfinder.com/time/digital/daily/0,2822,13344,00.html
because these bills are far from
perfect. In fact, they may be downright dangerous.
"Please, do no harm here. Let's keep what we
won," says Cindy Cohn, one of the lawyers
mounting an EFF-sponsored court challenge to
the White House's export rules. So far that effort
has been successful: A federal judge ruled last
December that the line-by-line instructions in a
computer program are "speech" and restrictions
on overseas shipments violate the First
Amendment.
Cohn argues that both Rep. Bob Goodlatte's
(R-Va.) SAFE bill and Sen. Conrad Burns'
(R-Mont.) ProCODE bill could do more harm than
good. ... "What effect would
SAFE or ProCODE have? Either none or a
detrimental one," Cohn said on Monday at a
conference organized by the Electronic Privacy
Information Center.
http://www.pathfinder.com/time/digital/daily/0,2822,13344,00.html
"He shouldn't need to apply for a license," Tien
says of the bill's provision that any mass-market
encryption product that's publicly available can be
exported "after a one-time 15-day technical review
by the Secretary of Commerce."
But the computer industry seems to think that any
legislation that satisfies Tien will surely not satisfy
the FBI.
