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From: Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com> Subject: FC: Letter from high-tech CEOs to Feinstein: back off! X-URL: Politech is at http://www.well.com/~declan/politech/
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January 15, 1998
The Honorable Dianne Feinstein United States Senate Washington, DC 21510
Dear Senator Feinstein,
As Chief Executive Officers of leading California companies, we were disappointed by your November 5 comments at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing implying that California companies are ambivalent regarding your position on encryption policy. We are anything but ambivalent about an issue that will have a profound impact on our companies, our customers, the citizens of our country, and our nation itself.
We are in the midst of a transformation of our society into an era where information technology is affecting and improving all of our lives and all of our businesses. Without effective security we put at risk the confidentiality of our intellectual property, the public's privacy and the nation's critical infrastructure. And none of us will be able to take full advantage of the opportunities being presented to us by the promise of global electronic commerce.
And consider the burgeoning threat of personal identity theft. As emphasized in the September 1997 issue of Consumer Reports, "the crime is one of the fastest-growing in the nation, according to the California District Attorneys Association. Identity thieves make off with billions of dollars a year...." Strong encryption with no systemic vulnerability is the best protection against such damaging fraud. Indeed, the credit-card industry, as you heard in testimony before the Judiciary Subcommittee on Terrorism and Technology on September 3, soon will be offering publicly a very sophisticated system for secure credit-card transactions over the Internet. While the system will be able to reconstruct transactions soon after the fact in response to legitimate law-enforcement requests, it does not employ keys and would not comply with the kind of mandate contemplated by the FBI.
Mandatory key recovery policies, domestically and for export, will make the United States a second class nation in the Information Age.
We are very sympathetic to the concerns of law enforcement, and we greatly respect your continuing support for them. In fact, if we believed that the policy of mandatory key recovery could successfully prevent criminals from having access to unbreakable encryption, we might support that position. However, this policy cannot succeed, and in the process of failing it will sacrifice the leading role that the State of California is playing in the international economy. Even more important, perhaps, the policy will create new law enforcement and national security challenges because U.S. corporations and government officials will be forced to rely on unproven foreign encryption technology. Maintaining United States leadership in the development of state-of-the-art cryptography is in the best interests of U.S. national security and law enforcement. California companies and industries nationwide are united in opposition to domestic and export controls that jeopardize this leadership.
California companies need your support to be able to meet this new day with a strong and competitive encryption industry. We urge you to meet regularly with representatives from our companies, in Washington D.C. and in California, to discuss this issue further.
Sincerely,
Christopher Allen President and CEO Consensus Development Corporation
Bill Archey CEO American Electronics Association
Jim Barksdale CEO Netscape Communications, Inc.
Carol Bartz CEO Autodesk, Inc.
George Bell CEO Excite, Inc.
Eric Benhamou Chairman and CEO 3Com Corporation
Jim Bidzos CEO RSA Data Security, Inc.
Philip Bowles President Bowles Farming Co., Inc.
Steve Case Chairman and CEO America Online, Inc.
Wilfred J. Corrigan Chairman and CEO LSI Logic
Thomas B. Crowley President & CEO Crowley Maritime Corporation
Philip Dunkelberger CEO PGP
Judy Estrin President & CEO Precept Software, Inc.
David W. Garrison CEO Netcom On-Line Communication Services, Inc.
Karl Geng President and CEO Siemens Business Communication Systems, Inc. Santa Clara, Calif.
Charles M. Geschke President Adobe Systems, Inc.
Brian L. Halla President, Chairman & CEO National Semiconductor, Inc.
Gordon Mayer CEO and Chairman Geoworks Corporation
Scott McNealy Chairman and CEO Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Ed Mueller Predident and CEO Pacific Bell
Kenneth J. Orton President and CEO Preview Travel, Inc.
Willem P. Roelandts CEO Xilinx, Inc.
Eric Schmidt CEO Novell, Inc.
Tom Steding CEO Red Creek
Deb Triant CEO Checkpoint
David E. Weiss Chairman, President and CEO Storage Technology Corporation
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