Forwarded From: phreakmoi <hackerelite@deathsdoor.com>
Is Strong Crypto a Human Right?
by James Glave
2:05 p.m. 10.Dec.98.PST
Privacy activists rallied around the United Nations' Human Rights Day
Thursday with email and fax protests targeting the government of China for
alleged human-rights abuses. A related campaign attacked a multinational
agreement that will tighten controls on data-scrambling technologies.
"We feel cryptography is one of the key elements required to protect human
rights, specifically the 12th article of the UN's Universal Declaration of
Human Rights that states that privacy is a basic human right," said Austin
Hill, president of privacy software firm Zero Knowledge Systems.
Hill said that new crypto controls -- part of an arms-control treaty
signed by 33 countries and known as the Wassenaar Arrangement -- will harm
the efforts of human-rights workers in China and elsewhere.
"Wassenaar implements a system whereby people say human rights are less
important than things like economic interests or the ability to conduct
foreign intelligence," said Hill.
The Wassenaar Arrangement, signed late last week, would limit the spread
of strong crypto on the grounds that it might be used by terrorists to
hide their communications.
Hill will join privacy experts at a San Francisco symposium hosted by the
Electronic Frontier Foundation called "Cyber Rights = Human Rights: The
Universal Declaration of Human Rights is Not a Local Ordinance in
Cyberspace."
Hill will be joined by other electronic-privacy luminaries, including EFF
co-founder John Perry Barlow and Esther Dyson, acting chairwoman of the
Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers.
A coalition of 13 free speech and scientific organizations launched an
email campaign on behalf of two imprisoned Chinese scientists charged with
using the Internet to promote democracy. Lin Hai is awaiting trial on
charges of supplying the email addresses of 30,000 Chinese citizens to a
dissident group in the United States.
And Wang Youcai was jailed last month after attempting to form an
opposition party and emailing supporting documents to dissidents.
Had strong encryption been available, it's likely that neither man would
be in jail today, suggested Dave Del Torto, founder of the Cryptorights
Foundation.
"Being able to communicate privately is an essential tool for anyone
challenging the status quo, whether military or political," said Del
Torto.
"There are a lot of questions if cryptography in particular is a human
right," he said. "That is one of the things that we are establishing, the
ability to use technology to maintain your privacy."
On Thursday, Hill's company launched FreeCrypto to protest the treaty.
People can fill out a Web form that will fax or email a letter of protest
to their government representatives.
"The Internet and other new, democratic information technologies have made
it easier than ever before for ordinary citizens to exercise their human
rights," said EFF counsel Mike Godwin in a statement.
"That's why it is so important for us all to renew our commitment to the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights.... new technologies have given
expanded meaning to those guarantees."
-o-
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Received on Fri Dec 11 08:26:26 1998