http://cgi.pathfinder.com/netly/editorial/0,1012,1722,00.html The Netly News (http://netlynews.com/) February 2, 1998 Software Money by Declan McCullagh (declan@well.com) Successful political campaigns follow a simple formula: 1) Spend heaps of money; 2) Puzzle out how to squeeze your message into one sentence, or, better yet, a bumper sticker. Silicon Valley finally got the first part right. Software chieftains, historically eager to squander cash on doomed marketing campaigns but loath to spend the same opposing government regulations, are about to ante up millions to detangle the skein of rules that restrict sales of data-scrambling encryption software. Sure, it's pocket change to California's zillionaires, but it may be just enough to get their deregulatory point across in the nation's capital. [...] Together the duo will coordinate the lobbying and media efforts of a new industry coalition, as yet unnamed but likely to be dubbed something like the Alliance for Computer Privacy. The soon-to-be-announced project (contracts haven't been signed yet) grew out of the Alliance for a Secure Tomorrow, which firms hurriedly created last fall to battle FBI-backed legislation banning software such as PGP, which is capable of encoding messages so securely that police can't crack them. But the AST languished. Soon CEOs of more than a dozen high-tech companies started talking about a more aggressive approach. "The only time you're going to win this battle is when you put money on the table," says Lauren Hall of the Software Publishers Association. [...]