Ex-UK Home Secretary blames crypto lobbyists for hijackers (1)

[Tolan Blundell]

Wasn't there an attempt by the prevous gov't to try to introduce key escrow
in a bill before RIP?
I forget what the bill was though.
Although I can't see Labour supporting a Tory bill, I wouldn't be suprised
if Straw did...
No one has yet been able to explain to me what Straw is doing being a member
of the Labour party,
he seems to be more right wing than most Tories.

Tolan

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-cypherpunks at ssz.com [mailto:owner-cypherpunks at ssz.com]On
Behalf Of Ken Brown
Sent: 28 September 2001 17:41
To: cypherpunks at lne.com
Subject: CDR: Ex-UK Home Secretary blames crypto lobbyists for hijackers
(1)


Jack Straw, the previous UK Home Secretary, sounded off about encryption
and the law in a radio interview this morning. He seemed to blame
"naive" libertarians for watering down laws and preventing security
people from spotting the hijackers. He wasn't very coherent on the
matter. Naive libertarians of my acquaintance haven't yet worked out
which law he meant - it can't be RIP which wasn't in force when the
suspects were in Britain & would have made no difference anyway. Maybe
it was the Human Rights Act, of which Straw was a strong supporter? He
also thinks his opponents should have changed their mind.  Perhaps we
would if were were as forgetful as he seems to be.

Ken Brown




Posted to UKcrypto by Ian Miller:

The Straw interview with Sue MacGregor (in RealAudio format) is on the
BBC
site at
<http://www.bbc.co.uk/cgi-bin//radio4/today/listen/audiosearch.pl?ProgID=100
1686
858>.

This is a 16 minute clip.  The Straw interview starts 5 minutes in
(05:01).
The first six minutes were largely about his recent diplomacy and, in my
view, generally good sense.  The following transcript is from 11:49 into
the click until the end of the interview at 13:45.

Straw:
Now you talk about eleven terrorists coming passed through here, I
understand that may be true, but I would also like to make this point, I
would like to ask you on the Today programme and other journalists to
cast
your mind back to the approach that all of you were taking before the
eleventh of September.  I can tell you and look at the record whenever I
was arguing in favour of tougher anti-terrorist powers or tougher powers
for example to de-encrypt commercially encrypted e-mails I was told that
this was a breach of civil liberties, almost that it was the end of
civilisation as we knew it and that it was completely unnecessary and
the
beginning of Big Brother society.  What I was doing and those who were
supporting me were doing was to say "hang on a second we live a
difficult"...

MacGregor (interrupting):
It wasn't this programme that was saying that, just to clarify, it maybe
people on this programme put that point of view.

Straw:
But there is an issue of the culture of journalism.  You of course very
often are a mouth piece for the prevailing non-governmental
organisations
and I understand why.  But I am just saying the prevailing mood was all
one
way, that this was Big Brother government.  It wasn't Big Brother
government.  It was government trying to put in place increased powers
so
that we could preserve and sustain our democracy against this new kind
of
threat.  Let me just give you one example, Sue.  We needed to take
powers
so that we could de-encrypt commerically encrypted e-mails and other
communications. Why?  Because we knew that terrorists were going to use
this.  What happened?  Large parts of the industry, backed by some
people
who will now recognise they were very naive in retrospect said "you
mustn't
do that" and the pressure was so great that we and in the United States,
I
used to talk to Jane Reno the then Attorney General about this, we had
to
back down a bit.  Now I heard people say "Why are these terrorists
here".
Well the answer is not because of any lapse by the intelligence or
security
services or the police but because people have had a two dimensional
view
of civil liberties.  The most fundamental civil liberty is the right to
life, and preserving that and sustaining that must come before others.

MacGregor:
Foreign Secretary, thank you very much.

Straw:
Thank you very much.