Forwarded From: "Jay D. Dyson" <jdyson@techreports.jpl.nasa.gov>
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Courtesy of Cryptography List.
Posted by Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>
http://cgi.pathfinder.com/netly/article/0,2334,13771,00.html
TIME.com / The Netly News
Feds Still Fretting Over Encryption
June 23, 1998
By Declan McCullagh
Let's say, just for argument's sake, that you're a top bureaucrat whose
job is to convince American businesses that those wickedly unpopular
encryption regulations are OK after all. You could do worse than follow
Commerce Department Undersecretary Bill Reinsch's lead: Set up an
advisory committee, hand-pick its members, kick the public out of the room
for a classified briefing from the NSA, and hope for the best.
That's what happened on Monday during the third meeting of the President's
Export Council Subcommittee on Encryption. It's still too early to tell
how crypto-conciliatory the members will be with the feds, but the lineup
of speakers at each meeting isn't helping. No privacy groups or
cryptographers have been invited.
When Barbara Simons of the Association for Computing Machinery observed
yesterday that the only folks invited to brief the committee during the
previous two meetings were feds, only two other people (including
Netscape's Peter Harter) said they thought it was a problem.
Raising no complaints were representatives from the House and Senate
Intelligence committees, who showed up yesterday to argue for strict
crypto restrictions. "We cannot subject national security and public
safety to the whims of the marketplace," said Patrick Murray, chief
counsel to House Intelligence. "Without access to plaintext, that
information will remain unavailable to law enforcement. Investigations
will cease. Criminals will remain on the street." Pedophiles, he
complained, could hide their "child pornography" with impunity.
Murray's committee last September voted to make it a crime to sell,
manufacture, distribute or import encryption products without backdoors
for government surveillance. Other House committees have voted for bills
that would relax export controls. "Unless there is a clear compromise," no
bill will go to the House floor for a vote this year, Murray said. Also
speaking to the committee were representatives from the Senate Judiciary
Committee and Rep. Zoe Lofgren's (D-Calif.) office.
Then the committee entered closed session. But it's not like the feds had
anything especially secret to say. America's national security was not at
stake. No covert operations were endangered. Then why did Commerce's
Reinsch recommend a closed session? Well, he said, "while not classified,
it's information you don't want to see in the newspapers."
That information, according to committee members who were there, was a
discussion of how many export licenses have been granted and rejected, and
an admission that there were some "interagency disagreements" between the
FBI, NSA and the Commerce Department. The three senior Commerce officials
briefing the subcommittee: Roger Majak, James Lewis and Patricia Sefcik.
Eleanor Padgett from NSA Information Systems Security spoke in the
afternoon.
The subcommittee also voted to send a letter to President Clinton urging
him to allow overseas shipments of weak 56-bit encryption and the export
of stronger products to financial institutions. "Continued delay has
dulled the initial positive response the administration received when it
first announced its intentions" to be nice to banks, says the letter,
written by former NSA general counsel and Steptoe & Johnson partner
Stewart Baker. Next on the agenda: a briefing from crypto-ambassador David
Aaron at the subcommittee's next meeting.
( ( ______
)) )) .- "There's always time for a good cup of coffee" -. >===<--.
C|~~|C|~~| [> Jay D. Dyson - jdyson@techreports.jpl.nasa.gov <] | = |-'
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Received on Mon Jun 29 10:25:02 1998