At 12:26 PM 3/11/96 -0500, Peter D. Junger wrote:

(4) the authority and ability of investigative and law enforcement officers to access and decipher, in a timely manner and as provided by law, wire and electronic communications necessary to provide for public safety and national security should also be preserved;

This provision of the bill makes the entire bill a worthless pile of repressive shit, despite all the pious good intentions in the rest of the bill. A little constitutional history: The supreme court used to rule that congress could not delegate its own power to bureaucrats, as this violated the principle of rule of law. Thus congress could pass a law than in a certain situation you had to do such and such, or refrain from doing so and so, but it could not pass a law that in a certain situation you had to do whatever some bureaucrat told you to do, because that would violate separation of powers and the principle of the rule of law, not men. Roosevelt threatened to stack the court, the court submitted, and the rule of law in the US was radically diminished. The proposed bill would seem to give bureaucrats the power to set aside the first, fourth, and fifth amendments, at whim. --------------------------------------------------------------------- | We have the right to defend ourselves | http://www.jim.com/jamesd/ and our property, because of the kind | of animals that we are. True law | James A. Donald derives from this right, not from the | arbitrary power of the state. | jamesd@echeque.com