---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Thu, 4 Sep 1997 17:06:08 -0700 (PDT) From: Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com> To: fight-censorship-announce@vorlon.mit.edu Subject: Administration backs away from FBI on crypto, by A.Pressman ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Thu, 04 Sep 1997 16:55:06 -0400 From: Aaron Pressman <aaron.pressman@reuters.com> To: declan@well.com Subject: crytpo etc Clinton administration back away from FBI on encryption By Aaron Pressman WASHINGTON, Sept 4 (Reuter) - The Clinton administration's top official on encryption policy on Thursday backed away from a proposal by the head of the FBI to regulate for the first time computer coding products in the United States. "What he proposed was not the administration's policy," Commerce Undersecretary William Reinsch told reporters during a break at a congressional hearing. FBI Director Louis Freeh's comments Wednesday before a subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee sparked strong criticism from civil liberties groups and the software industry. U.S. law strictly regulates the export of encryption products, which can be used to scramble information and render it unreadable without a password or software "key." But on Wednesday, Freeh proposed mandatory controls on currently unregulated coding products intended solely for domestic use. "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," Reinsch explained. "That doesn't mean he was speaking for everybody." Freeh said makers of encryption products should include features that would allow the government to crack any message. Without such capabilities, criminals, terrorists and pedophiles could use encryption to hide their communications from law enforcement agencies, Freeh said. But software companies maintain that Freeh's plan would make their products less attractive and make all electronic messages less secure. Civil liberties groups said mandatory controls on domestic encryption might violate constitutional guarantees of free speech and privacy. Under the FBI director's proposal, all encryption products would have a feature allowing government access to coded messages, but users could disable or avoid using the feature. Some senators wanted to go further. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat, proposed requiring all users of encryption to enable the back-door access feature. Freeh said such a law would be the best solution for law enforcement but added that he did not think it was politically viable. Reinsch said Freeh'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." Thursday, 4 September 1997 16:13:38 RTRS [nN04290412] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Any views expressed in this message are those of the individual sender, except where the sender specifically states them to be the views of Reuters Ltd.