---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Tue, 1 Oct 1996 05:57:17 -0700 (PDT) From: Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com> To: fight-censorship@vorlon.mit.edu Subject: Congress' wiretap and FTC/FCC net-regulation bills, from HotWired http://www.netizen.com/netizen/96/40/index1a.html HotWired The Netizen "Sure, Walter Scott" by Declan McCullagh (declan@well.com) Washington, DC, 30 September When Parade, that ever-so-offline Sunday magazine, announces that Iranian terrorists use the Internet and unbreakable encryption to plan bombings, you know that anti-Net fearmongering has outgrown the Beltway and is gunning for Middle America. On the page facing an advertisement for a gilded 18-inch porcelain cherubim (US$97.96, if you must know), columnist Walter Scott wrote yesterday that Iranian terrorists have "stopped using the phone" in favor of the Internet. Then he quoted an unnamed "expert on international terrorism" who claims that terrorists have outsmarted the spooks: "Just when we thought we had outsmarted them, they caught on and started using codes on the Internet.... There's so much crazy screwball stuff on the Internet that it's practically impossible to track down and isolate the terrorists." Scott did not return phone calls. Small wonder, with fantastic columns like Scott's, that in the waning days of the 104th Congress our elected representatives have failed to do the right thing by the Net. A conspicuous lack of congressional spine made it almost inevitable that Capitol Hill would cave in to the demands of the White House and the Justice Department over the weekend and agree to yank portions of the FBI's national wiretap plan that limited the snooping powers of the Feds. On Saturday, this Digital Telephony slush fund cleared the House as part of an elephantine six-agency spending bill and the Senate approved it today. Earlier this month both the House and Senate declined to act on bills that would lift the encryption export embargo. Supporters of the measures were outflanked by Nebraska senator Jim Exon's intra-committee maneuvering and the anti-terrorism rhetoric of Jamie Gorelick, the deputy attorney general. Gorelick said last week at a hearing before the House Judiciary Committee that the DOJ is "concerned about the proliferation of unbreakable encryption" that might fall into the hands of "terrorists, organized crime, and foreign intelligence agents." (She doesn't like to admit that PGP is already available around the world.) True, some of the more Net-friendly legislators have tried to help. Senator Conrad Burns (R-Montana) emerged as a champion of netizens' privacy rights with his encryption bill, Pro-CODE. Representative Rick White (R-Washington) introduced a bill that would let ISPs give free online time to political candidates - but even though the House passed the bill last Thursday, the Senate will not. In another kind of congressional schizophrenia, one measure would give the Federal Trade Commission authority to regulate the Internet - while another bill blocks the Federal Communications Commission from even thinking about it. White attached an amendment to the FCC Modernization Act - an act that completely denies the commission jurisdiction "with respect to content or other regulation of the Internet or other interactive computer services." The House Republicans passed it over the objections of the Dems on 12 September, but it's still stuck in committee. White had tried to insert this amendment in the 1996 Telecom Act, but it was sliced out. Now he's trying again. "He believes that the federal government gets a little overzealous in regulation," says Connie Correll, White's press secretary. "We're dealing with a new medium that people aren't too familiar with." An FCC policy analyst says the commission "doesn't want to regulate the Net" but that "White's language would be a mistake." The analyst, who wished to remain anonymous, said: "For example, would the FCC be barred from creating regulations to protect privacy online, or from preempting state laws and regulations that criminalize online indecency?" Then late last week, Representative Bob Franks (R-New Jersey) coughed up his own Net-regulation bill. It's designed to respond to the outcry over the Lexis-Nexis P-TRAK database by halting the spread of Social Security numbers. Inexplicably, it does that by letting the FTC "examine and investigate" ISPs and issue "cease and desist" orders against them if they serve as an SSN-distribution conduit. I called up Frank DiStefano from Franks' office. "Why hold ISPs liable?" I asked him. "In June, the FTC itself decided to hold off from Net regulation.. If someone is giving out another person's personal information, why not let the courts decide if he's violating the law?" "OK, you've convinced me," said DiStefano. He said the reason the FTC provisions were in the bill was "to make a point" and his office "would work on this over the recess." No doubt - until Parade calls for the FTC to crack down on narco-terrorists selling Social Security numbers online. --- Some links: Linkname: Brock Meeks on FEC reform, Rep. White's bill URL: http://www.netizen.com/netizen/96/18/index5a.html Linkname: Democrats vote in committee to let FCC regulate Net URL: http://www2.eff.org/pub/Legislation/Bills_by_sponsor/white_fcc_ noregulation_1996.vote ###