Building in Big Brother, from The Netly News
Declan McCullagh
declan at well.com
Wed Sep 10 16:19:33 PDT 1997
Forgot to say -- Check out the second half of my article (not attached, at
the URL below) for a look ahead at what other committees might do with
mandatory key escrow, based on my conversations with some pro-GAK
representatives.
-Declan
On Wed, 10 Sep 1997, Declan McCullagh wrote:
> ---
>
> http://cgi.pathfinder.com/netly/opinion/0,1042,1385,00.html
>
> The Netly News Network (http://netlynews.com/)
> September 10, 1997
>
> Building in Big Brother
> By Declan McCullagh (declan at well.com)
>
> The U.S. Congress, bowing to law enforcement demands for more
> wiretap powers, is preparing to approve a scheme that endangers the
> personal freedom of every American.
>
> Nobody doubts that wiretaps are useful tools for law enforcement
> agents. FBI Director Louis Freeh, who as a young agent built his
> career on them, knows this well.
>
> But Freeh's plan would expand the FBI's eavesdropping ability by
> building Big Brother into every word processor, every e-mail program
> and every web browser. All computer software distributed after 1998
> would have a special, secret backdoor for government access to your
> most private files. Even your Internet provider would be deputized as
> a cyber-snoop. It's the technological equivalent of requiring that
> every homeowner turn over a spare copy of his front door key to the
> FBI.
>
> This is the same FBI that has a long and disturbing history of
> abusing Americans' privacy. As director, J. Edgar Hoover built a
> successful career out of illegal wiretaps, secret files and political
> blackmail. Hoover despised Martin Luther King, Jr. -- branding him an
> "obsessive degenerate" -- and once sent him an anonymous letter, using
> information gathered through illegal surveillance, to encourage the
> depressed civil rights leader to commit suicide. Hoover's legacy?
> Having the FBI headquarters bear his name today.
>
> [...]
>
>
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