********** Date: Wed, 30 Apr 1997 19:28:10 -0400 To: fight-censorship-announce@vorlon.mit.edu From: Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com> X-FC-URL: Fight-Censorship is at http://www.eff.org/~declan/fc/ After all the backroom wrangling that led up to today's markup, the actual subcommittee vote on legislation that would lift export controls on encryption was an anticlimax. A House Judiciary subcommittee passed Rep. Bob Goodlatte's (R-Va) "SAFE" bill unanimously by voice vote. Not one member of the panel spoke against it -- even after the Justice Department tried a last-minute lobbying blitz to derail the bill. It's a tribute to the effectiveness of the high-tech lobbyists that even Rep. Bill McCollum (R-Fl) didn't slam the bill, as he was itching to do. Instead he had to be content with huffing: "I'm not saying I'm opposed to the bill; I want to put up a red flag. There are people in the intelligence community and criminal justice community who have expressed concerns to me." He warned he might have amendments later. And what else could he say? High tech was smart enough to recruit outside its ranks for unusual allies in its last-minute legislative push. An April 29 letter to the committee urging them to pass the bill included groups like the National Association of Manufacturers and the National Retail Federation. Goodlatte, the bill's chief sponsor, came up to me afterwards and grinned. "We already have a significant majority of the full committee supporting this bill," he said. "There's not one member of Congress who's stepped up and said they're openly opposed to this legislation. None." (Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Ca) noted that she received a letter from a coalition of groups criticizing the bill for imposing harsh criminal penalties for using crypto to further a crime. She vaguely promised to address it later. That section stayed in.) But the fight isn't over; rather, it's just beginning. SAFE still has to clear the full House Judiciary committee, and Sen. Conrad Burns' Pro-CODE bill has yet to advance in the Senate. Don't discount the Clinton administration and the Department of Justice -- the largest law firm in the world, with plenty of lobbyists who regularly swarm onto Capitol Hill to demand expanded police powers. An excerpt from the DoJ's fearmongering letter sent to the committee today is attached below. -Declan *************** April 30, 1997 Rep. Howard Coble Subcommittee on Courts and Intellectual Property chairman House Judiciary Committee Your Subcommittee will soon begin mark-up of H.R. 695, the "Security and Freedom Through Encryption (SAFE) Act." Although the Department of Justice supports H.R. 695's overall goal of promoting the wide dissemination of strong encryption, we believe that the bill would severely compromise law enforcement's ability to protect the American people from the threats posed by terrorists, organized crime, child pornographers, drug cartels, financial predators, hostile foreign intelligence agents, and other criminals. In addition, the bill would greately impair the government's ability to prosecute those crimes when they do occur. We urge the Subcommittee to reject H.R. 695 in its present form... We also oppose H.R. 695 because it would impede or prevent the development of a key management infrastructure. The bill could be read as prohibiting the United States government from using appropriate incentives to support a key management infrastructure and key recovery. Without such an infrastructure supporting key recovery, federal law enforcement investigations will become far more difficult. The problems that enactment of H.R. 695 would pose for state and local law enforcement, which lack access to supercomputers, are even greater... Sincerely, Andrew Fois Assistant Attorney General Office of Legislative Affairs U.S. Department of Justice ------------------------- Declan McCullagh Time Inc. The Netly News Network Washington Correspondent http://netlynews.com/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------- This list is public. To join fight-censorship-announce, send "subscribe fight-censorship-announce" to majordomo@vorlon.mit.edu. More information is at http://www.eff.org/~declan/fc/