---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Lauren Amy Gelman, USACM gelman@acm.org U.S. Public Policy Committee for the Association for Computing ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Fri, 01 Aug 1997 16:24:40 -0400 From: Aaron Pressman <aaron.pressman@reuters.com> Subject: reuters crypto story Human rights groups favor strong encryption abroad WASHINGTON, Aug 1 (Reuter) - Human rights activists came to Capitol Hill on Friday to tell lawmakers of their need to use strong computer encoding programs, subject to strict U.S. export limits, in their work outside the country. The debate over exports of encryption technology, which scrambles information and renders it unreadable without a password or software "key," has largely pitted the interests of commercial companies and civil libertarians against those of law enforcement and intelligence agencies. But human rights advocates said Friday they also had a critical interest at stake. Swift and inexpensive communications over the Internet "promise to destroy the ability of abusive regimes to silence their people, hide their atrocities and blockade the truth," said Dinah PoKempner, deputy general counsel for Human Rights Watch. "Encryption offers the most fundamental protection to those who seek to bring abuses to light in these circumstances," she added at a briefing for congressional staff. Those who report human rights abuses can become victims of abuse if discovered, so the availability of encryption to hide electronic mail messages or faxes can be a matter of "life or death," said Patrick Ball, who trains human rights activists to use the technology. The Clinton administration generally prohibits the export of strong encryption unless the products allow the government to decode any message by gaining access to the software keys. A variety of encryption-related legislation is pending in Congress, including bills that would overturn the Clinton policy and relax the export limits. Ball, senior program associate with the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), warned that the use of so-called key recovery features to give governments access to coded messages could compromise the work of human rights groups. "How can we ensure that intelligence and law enforcement groups in repressive countries will not directly or indirectly obtain human rights groups keys from the U.S. government," Ball asked. "Human rights monitoring is always defined by repressive regimes as a threat to national security." Congressional staffers attending the briefing also heard from leading cryptography scientists who said U.S. export controls stifled research on encryption, thereby slowing the development of more secure computer networks. Alex Fowler, project coordinator with the AAAS, said the presentations were intended to counter the portrait of encryption users painted by law enforcement agencies. "We want to reaffirm that cryptography is a science, not just a pastime of anarchists, terrorists and hackers," Fowler said. The export rules prohibit U.S. researchers from collaborating with foreign scientists on coding technology, according to Ian Goldberg, a graduate student at the University of California. In January, Goldberg sucessfully cracked a message in a few hours that had been encoded with the most powerful encryption allowed to be freely exported from the United States. A Canadian citizen, Goldberg said that he could collaborate with others or publish research on the Internet while home from school. "But I can't go home every time I have an idea --the plane fare alone..." he joked. --Aaron Pressman((202-898-8312)) For related news, double click on one of the following codes: [E] [U] [MNI] [NAT] [CAN] [US] [WASH] [BUS] [TEL] [DPR] [TRD] [ENT] [MUNI] [GVD] [DBT] [INT] [FRX] [CA] [LEN] [RTRS] Friday, 1 August 1997 16:04:06 RTRS [nN01204006] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 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.