ACM/IEEE Letter on Crypto

[jim bell]

At 04:24 PM 4/1/96 -0500, Dave Banisar wrote:
>              Association For Computing Machinery
[address deleted]
>      Institute of Electronics and Electrical Engineers
[address deleted]
>April 2, 1996
[thank heavens it wasn't April 1!]
>Honorable Conrad Burns
>Chairman, Subcommittee on Science, Technology and Space
[etc]
>Dear Chairman Burns:
>
>	On behalf of the nation's two leading computing and engineering 
>associations, we are writing to support your efforts, and the efforts of 
>the other cosponsors of the Encrypted Communications Privacy Act, to 
>remove unnecessarily restrictive controls on the export of encryption 
>technology.  The Encrypted Communications Privacy Act sets out the 
>minimum changes that are necessary to the current export controls on  
>encryption technology.  However, we believe that the inclusion of issues 
>that are tangential to export, such as key escrow and encryption in 
>domestic criminal activities, is not necessary.  The relaxation of 
>export controls is of great economic importance to industry and users, 
>and should not become entangled in more controversial matters.

As far as it goes, and considering that it's from an industry group, this 
sounds like an excellent response to this Burns bill proposal.  (Not "Bill," 
because it's still not available, apparently.)  This response is probably as 
close as we can expect to a repudiation of the Leahy bill.  It still isn't 
clear, though, whether the Burns bill is intended to be just an elimination 
of export controls on encryption, or whether it will contain other provisions.

My question, which still hasn't been answered, is:  "Does this bill exist 
yet?"  The answer is really not inconsequential, because if it _isn't_ at 
least sketched out yet, then that either should give us the opportunity to 
add provisions we want, or alert us that there is still the risk from 
Denning-types of including provisions we don't want.  Either way, action is 
called for, if only action to keep somebody else from taking action.  

I don't have any objection to a bill which merely eliminates export 
requirements on encryption; that would be a substantial step in the proper 
direction.  If that's the best we can do for this session of Congress, I 
hope we can achieve this as a stepping-stone. 


Jim Bell
jimbell at pacifier.com