John, The 1st - encrypted communications are speech. The 4th - plaintext that has been encrypted cannot be "found." The 5th - If your password is memorized then the only way to produce it is as a witness against yourself. So much for the layman's view. What is the current legal thinking and, more importantly, the relevant legal precedents? Aren't they ( LE ) making a bit of a leap when they say that the Constitution defines access to information not just items? It looks like the only way to achieve the information access they want is through modification of the Constitution. There is often a right-leaning political flavor to the CP list but isn't it such right-wingers as Rhenquist and Starr who invented the various forms of immunity that already can be used to subvert the 5th? Now they are trying to establish the legal equivalence of the physical and the virtual. I wish Kyle et al well in their fight against legions of terrorists but I hope that they have an impossible battle ahead of them when it comes to downgrading the Bill of Rights. Besides, more than wanting to protect us little lambs from terrorists, I think they recognize the degree to which technology is changing the world and are trying to resist the power shifts that are likely. The other reasons they give are mostly chaff. Regards, Mike John Young wrote:

Senator Kyl has issued a long report, "Crime, Terror & War: National Security and Public Safety in the Information Age," which recounts his Subcommittee's hearings and recommendations on encryption, Y2K, terrorism, info war, domestic preparedness, wiretap, and more:

http://jya.com/ctw.htm (97K)

It describes a plan to combat threats to critical infrastructure and the US homeland which, if implemented, would criminalize much held dear to a few of this list's subscribers; other lurkers will be overjoyed to read Kyl coming to the rescue of careers and budgets of MIB and their suppliers of technologies of political control.

He wants DoD to get cracking on domestic protection, move over piddling LEA. Civil liberties, nonsense. Crypto genie out of the bottle, more nonsense. Getting government access to encrypted communications, you bet. Through commercial products, yep.