Congress mulls crypto restrictions in response to attacks

Aimee Farr aimee.farr at pobox.com
Thu Sep 13 14:17:15 PDT 2001


Amateur radio was the first casualty after Pearl Harbor. Some criticize the
action now, of course.

~Aimee

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-cypherpunks at lne.com [mailto:owner-cypherpunks at lne.com]On
> Behalf Of Declan McCullagh
> Sent: Thursday, September 13, 2001 3:59 PM
> To: cypherpunks at lne.com
> Subject: Congress mulls crypto restrictions in response to attacks
>
>
> http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,46816,00.html
>
>     Congress Mulls Stiff Crypto Laws
>     By Declan McCullagh (declan at wired.com)
>     1:45 p.m. Sep. 13, 2001 PDT
>
>     WASHINGTON -- The encryption wars have begun.
>
>     For nearly a decade, privacy mavens have been worrying that a
>     terrorist attack could prompt Congress to ban
>     communications-scrambling products that frustrate both police wiretaps
>     and U.S. intelligence agencies.
>
>     Tuesday's catastrophe, which shed more blood on American soil than any
>     event since the Civil War, appears to have started that process.
>
>     Some politicians and defense hawks are warning that extremists such as
>     Osama bin Laden, who U.S. officials say is a crypto-aficionado and the
>     top suspect in Tuesday's attacks, enjoy unfettered access to
>     privacy-protecting software and hardware that render their
>     communications unintelligible to eavesdroppers.
>
>     In a floor speech on Thursday, Sen. Judd Gregg (R-New Hampshire)
>     called for a global prohibition on encryption products without
>     backdoors for government surveillance.
>
>     "This is something that we need international cooperation on and we
>     need to have movement on in order to get the information that allows
>     us to anticipate and prevent what occurred in New York and in
>     Washington," Gregg said, according to a copy of his remarks that an
>     aide provided.
>
>     President Clinton appointed an ambassador-rank official, David Aaron,
>     to try this approach, but eventually the administration abandoned the
>     project.
>
>     Gregg said encryption makers "have as much at risk as we have at risk
>     as a nation, and they should understand that as a matter of
>     citizenship, they have an obligation" to include decryption methods
>     for government agents. Gregg, who previously headed the appropriations
>     committee overseeing the Justice Department, said that such access
>     would only take place with "court oversight."
>
>     [...]
>
>     Frank Gaffney of the Center for Security Policy, a hawkish think tank
>     that has won accolades from all recent Republican presidents, says
>     that this week's terrorist attacks demonstrate the government must be
>     able to penetrate communications it intercepts.
>
>     "I'm certainly of the view that we need to let the U.S. government
>     have access to encrypted material under appropriate circumstances and
>     regulations," says Gaffney, an assistant secretary of defense under
>     President Reagan.
>
>     [...]
>
>
>
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