Compuserve Online Today Daily Edition, 15 June 1996: Attorney General Janet Reno is advancing a plan to establish a new agency overseeing all digital encryption, saying that would make it tougher for criminals and terrorists to use the Internet to carry out crimes. Speaking to the Commonwealth Club of California in San Francisco, Reno said her plan would require people to register with the new agency the secret codes -- or "keys" -- they use to encrypt messages online. Reporting on this speech, Sandra Ann Harris of United Press International adds, "Federal authorities could then obtain the information they need to decipher the encryptions using a court order and secretly monitor electronic communication on the Internet the same way wiretaps are used to monitor telephone conversations of suspected criminals." Reno added, "We look only to make existing law apply to new technology," adding new computer programs designed to crack the new complicated encryptions take too long to be useful to law enforcement. "Some of our most important prosecutions have depended on wire taps." She also said registration of keys might end up being a worldwide requirement, since the Internet is used increasingly for international communication, commerce, and criminal enterprise. Reno told the group that effectively regulting electronic encryption will depend on fiding a blance between protecting privacy interests while stopping criminals from cashing in on the new technology. "If we do our job right citizens will enjoy the Information Age without being victimized" by high technology, Reno said. United Press International Charles Bowen