At 06:24 AM 4/1/96 -0500, John Young wrote:
The New York Times, April 1, 1996, p. A14. Pioneers of Cyberspace Move Into Wider Arena, By Peter H. Lewis Cambridge, Mass., March 30 -- Cyberspace is dead, many of its electronic pioneers said at a conference here this week.
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The proposals include the formation of an Internet Caucus in Congress and a Senate blll to relax the Government's laws restricting the transmission of secrets over the global information network.
This goes to show that export controls on encryption are going to have to go, Leahy bill or not.
"Washington is coming to thls conference in droves," said Daniel J. Weltzner, deputy dlrector of the Center for Democracy and Technology, one of several public-interest groups that seek to influence Government policy related to cyberspace, "and I think it's very exciting and promising. It's the coming of age of this community."
I don't think they have any choice! Washington is already bombarded with email within hours every time they do something stupid.
The Computers, Freedom and Privacy crowd included its usual assortment of computer hackers, academics and self- described crypto-anarchists, and even one man wearing video goggles with an antenna apparently sprouting from his head. But it also included others who wanted to assess the fusion of cyberspace and real space: Federal judges, lawmakers, White House policy experts, corporate executives and law-enforcement agents.
Some of whom might even be aware that they could easily lose their jobs as a consequence of what's happening now on the 'net.
Senator Conrad Burns, a Republican from the real frontier state of Montana, chose the conference to announce, by telephone, new legislation that would remove nearly all current Government restrictions on the export of mass-market encryption software, which is used to send secret messages over computer and telephone networks.
I sure wish they'd hurry up on this legislation. Hope it's not just vaporware...er... vaporbill, or whatever.
Senator Burns's legislation would also block the Administration from imposing as a Government standard any form of data encryption that would give law-enforcement agencies the ability to decode messages.
Gee, I thought the 1st amendment did that? Are our freedoms dependant on a bill that hasn't yet been passed, and may not even yet exist?
The Senator's bill places him squarely at odds with the Clinton Administration and the Justice Department. But Mr. Burns said the use of robust data encryption would foster the rise of electronic commerce, distance education and digital communicatlons, which his large, rural state desperately needs in the 21st century. While the bill might have little chance of passage this year, conference participants were heartened by what appears to be growing support in Congress for a relaxation of the Government's cryptography policy.
I'm anxious to see how many self-proclaimed supporters of the Leahy bill are going to do the right thing and drop their support of it once the text of this Burns bill has been released. (assuming the Burns bill turns out to be satisfactory, of course, and that it covers all the "good" parts that we wanted from Leahy as well as leaving out all the bad ones.) Though I was never happy about that "list of shame" idea, one of the tests that would partially confirm or deny the proper placement of any given name on that list would be that the person named would shift his support to a repaired bill. I can't see any logical reason to continue to support a flawed bill if and when a corrected bill appears.
The proposal drew some opposition. "I think we'll regret it down the road," said Dorothy E. Denning, a professor of computer sciences at Georgetown University and a computer security consultant to the military. Dr. Denning and others have argued that the use of unrestricted encryption would thwart the ability of law-enforcement and intelligence agencies to conduct wiretaps on messages sent by foreign spies, terrorists, child pornographers and other criminals.
Damn! They keep leaving me out of their short list! Maybe they meant to lump me in with the groups they mentioned. I'm an American, so I can't be a "foreign spy," and my supply of child pornography is at a constant zero level. I'd sure hate to be lumped into an ignominious position with the "other criminals," however: What an unimpressive title! Maybe I'll just have to settle for being called a terrorist. Harrumph! Jim Bell jimbell@pacifier.com