[117286] in Cypherpunks
Re: ACTION ALERT: Crypto Legislation
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Alan Davidson)
Mon Aug 30 21:54:08 1999
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Date: Mon, 30 Aug 1999 21:37:20 -0400
To: John Young <jya@pipeline.com>
From: Alan Davidson <abd@cdt.org>
Cc: cypherpunks@cyberpass.net
Reply-To: Alan Davidson <abd@cdt.org>
>At 12:08 8/29/1999 -0400, John Young wrote:
>>Declan McCullagh wrote August 28, 1999:
>>
>>>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.
>>
>>This is serious mud. I like to see what CDT has to say.
>>
>>Alan Davidson:
>>
>>Would you or anybody at CDT care to respond to Declan and the
>>anonymous person who posted last night CDT's call to action on
>>crypto legislation?
>>
>>John
John,
I mentioned that life is too short for me to spend much time debunking
these misrepresentations about CDT, but I will say a few things about this
latest round:
* Through it's entire existence CDT has been steadfastly opposed to
government key escrow and key recovery. In fact it was CDT that published
the Blaze et al. experts report on Risks of Key Recovery that put the nails
in the key recovery coffin. To imply that we have ever supported Clipper or
any mandatory "plaintext access" system is simply untrue. See
http://www.cdt.org/crypto
* The Electronic Frontier Foundation supported CALEA, with the blessing of
it's board (and some of CDT's current staff; CDT didn't exist then). A ton
has been written about why this was viewed as a decent balance at the time;
check out www.eff.org. Since then, CDT has been second to none in the time
and energy we have spent policing the FBI's flagrant abuse of the statute,
including the unfortunate recent FCC anti-privacy ruling. See
http://www.cdt.org/digtel
* CDT has tirelessly opposed restrictions on speech online, including
harmful to minors speech. We fought the COPA harmful to minors statute in
Congress last year tooth and nail, along with the ACLU, *while a lot of
groups sat on the sidelines.* We organized one of the two major challenges
to the Communications Decency Act and our lawyer, Bruce Ennis, argued the
case before the Supreme Court. In the midst of the heated 1995 battle over
CDA we did at one point argue that a narrower 'harmful to minors' bill was
less restrictive of speech than the broader 'indecency' statute that did in
fact pass the Congress -- which it was. Since then we have opposed both
indecency and harmful to minors laws in Congress and in the courts, filing
briefs in cases like the recent COPA challenge. To say that CDT supports
harmful to minors regulations is to totally misrepresent five years of free
speech advocacy work. See http://www.cdt.org/speech
Alan Davidson, Staff Counsel 202.637.9800 (v)
Center for Democracy and Technology 202.637.0968 (f)
1634 Eye St. NW, Suite 1100 <abd@cdt.org>
Washington, DC 20006 PGP key via finger
* Value Your Privacy? The FBI Doesn't. Say 'No' to Crypto Key Escrow! *
Adopt Your Legislator - http://www.cdt.org/action
