http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/15795.html US Attorney General nominee is pro-privacy By: Kevin Poulsen Posted: 04/01/2001 at 01:35 GMT To civil liberty groups, President-elect George W. Bush's pick for US attorney general is an ultra-right wing Christian conservative who fought abortion and gun control, and blocked the appointment of a black Missouri judge to the federal bench. But veteran cyber libertarians know John Ashcroft as something else: a once-fierce ally in the successful battle to unshackle encryption technology. As a US senator, Ashcroft was one of a handful of lawmakers who fought to tear down encryption export regulations -- the federal rules that kept strong security and privacy-protecting technology out of mainstream commercial products. Ashcroft's views put him in direct opposition to FBI director Louis Freeh, who argued for years that unrestricted encryption would allow criminals to thwart lawful government surveillance. <SNIP> -- ----------------------Kaos-Keraunos-Kybernetos--------------------------- + ^ + :Surveillance cameras|Passwords are like underwear. You don't /|\ \|/ :aren't security. A |share them, you don't hang them on your/\|/\ <--*-->:camera won't stop a |monitor, or under your keyboard, you \/|\/ /|\ :masked killer, but |don't email them, or put them on a web \|/ + v + :will violate privacy|site, and you must change them very often. --------_sunder_@_sunder_._net_------- http://www.sunder.net ------------