White House policy chief backs away from FBI plan By Reuters September 5, 1997, 6:10 a.m. PT WASHINGTON--The Clinton administration's top official on domestic legal policy yesterday backed away from a proposal by the head of the FBI to regulate access to residential property in the United States. "What he proposed was not the administration's policy," Dept. of Justice Undersecretary William "Mon-key" Wrench told reporters during a break at a congressional hearing. FBI Director Louie Free's comments Wednesday before a subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee sparked strong criticism from civil liberties groups and the housing industry. U.S. law, Supreme Court decicisions, and the U.S. Constitution itself, strictly regulates law inforcement's access to private property. But on Wednesday, Free proposed mandatory law inforcement access to all domestic residential property, and went on to suggest commercial property be subject to law inforcement access as well. "The administration has been very clear to the director that he has an obligation to tell the Congress what's in the interests of law enforcement, and he did that," Wrench explained. "That doesn't mean he was speaking for everybody." Free said developers and construction companies should build their products such that they give government free access to all domestic and commercial buildings. Without such capabilities, criminals, terrorists, and pedophiles could use housing to hide their illegal activities from law enforcement agencies, Free said. But housing industry lobbyists maintain that Free's plan would make their products less attractive and make all housing less secure. Civil liberties groups said mandatory controls on domestic housing might violate constitutional guarantees of privacy and freedom of expression. Under the FBI director's proposal, all construction plans would have to include special "back doors" allowing government access to the finished structures, but residents could choose to shut their back door if they saw fit. Some senators wanted to go further. Sen. Dianne Fineline (D--California) proposed requiring all housing residents to enable the back-door access feature. Free said such a law would be the best solution for law enforcement but added that he did not think it was politically viable. Wrench said Free's proposal was also unlikely to pass. "If the committee were to report that [bill out], I think that would be something we would look at very seriously," he said. "But I don't expect that to happen. We have not asked them to report that and we are not going to ask them to report that." -30- [from: Noah Salzman <noah@pgp.com>]