SAFE vote and cutting crypto-deals, report from House Judiciary

[Declan McCullagh]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 15 May 1997 10:16:06 -0400
From: "Shabbir J. Safdar" <shabbir at vtw.org>
To: Declan McCullagh <declan at well.com>, fight-censorship at vorlon.mit.edu
Subject: Re: SAFE vote and cutting crypto-deals, report from House Judiciary

At 9:11 PM -0700 5/14/97, Declan McCullagh wrote:

>* The heinous section of the law that would create
>  broad new Federal felonies for some uses of crypto was
>  replaced. The amendment, offered by Rep. Delahunt
>  and adopted unanimously includes eight hurdles:
>
>	"Any person who, in the commission of a felony under
>	a criminal statute of the United States, knowingly
>	and willfully encrypts incriminating information
>	relating to that felony with the intent to conceal
>	such information for the purposes of avoiding
>	detection by law enforcement agencies or
>	prosecution..."
>
>  It's a solid improvement, but this language still has
>  no business becoming law. Problem is, nobody seems to
>  have the balls to stand up and yank it. Delahunt,
>  the amendment's sponsor, said the bill without the
>  amendment "could have a chilling effect on the
>  development and use of encryption." He added: "I
>  recognize that some supporters of this amendment would
>  like that this section be removed altogether." But it
>  doesn't seem likely.

I'm more than a little surprised at your take on this amendment.  This
exact language wasn't created by Representatives who don't know better, it
was created, shopped, and marketed to the hill by the folks at the ACLU
(Don Haines) and EPIC.  In response to concerns from the net, they
coordinated the letter from many groups to Goodlatte about the criminal
provision which just about everyone signed onto.

Then, EPIC and the ACLU worked out the language above, and got it passed
verbatim in response to the concerns of the net community.  They did a
great job here and really deserve a lot of kudos.  Why are you slighting
their work?

-S