Financial Times, May 3, 1996, p. 7. Dole backs removal of software export ban By Louise Kehoe in San Francisco Senator Bob Dole, the presumptive Republican presidential candidate, yesterday threw his support behind proposed legislation to remove US export restrictions on computer software used to encode Internet messages. The new Security and Freedom through Encryption bill introduced yesterday by several Republican senators and congressmen, also rejects a controversial Clinton administration proposal to enable law enforcement agencies to unlock encoded electronic messages. For Senator Dole, the encryption bill provides an opportunity to seek support from Silicon Valley high-tech leaders many of whom backed Mr Bill Clinton in 1992, and to boost his election campaign efforts in California. "The administration's misguided proposal on encryption amounts to a pair of cement shoes for Silicon Valley," said Senator Dole. "It seems to me that a new pair of track shoes might be a better answer. The administration's big brother proposal will literally destroy America's computer industry," he said. Encryption software is currently classified as "munitions" and exports are strictly limited by the US state department. US and other western intelligence and law enforcement agencies are opposed to the commercial use of the most powerful encryption methods which they argue could be used to mask criminal or terrorist activities by effectively preventing wire-taps. However, US software companies maintain that the current export restrictions threaten US pre-eminence in the world software market. A study by the Computer Systems Policy Project, a computer industry group, estimated that within four years the US economy would lose $60bn in revenues and roughly 216,000 jobs as a result of encryption export controls. Moreover, current regulations, which allow export only of "weak" encryption, are unacceptable because such encoding has been demonstrated to be ineffective. Last year, for example students in France were able to break encryption which is used in the export version of Netscape Communication's popular Internet browser software. The limited availability of strong encryption software is also blocking the progress of electronic commerce on the Internet, US computer experts argue, because companies and individuals are reluctant to make electronic payments over the Internet without assurance of security. -----