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[FYI] FITUG urges political leaders to defend citizens' freedoms
- To: debate@lists.fitug.de
- Subject: [FYI] FITUG urges political leaders to defend citizens' freedoms
- From: "Axel H Horns" <horns@ipjur.com>
- Date: Tue, 18 Sep 2001 21:30:25 +0200
- CC: krypto@thur.de
http://www.fitug.de/news/pes/fitug-010918.en.html
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FITUG e.V.
Förderverein Informationstechnik und Gesellschaft
FITUG urges political leaders to defend citizens' freedoms
Tuesday's terrorist attacks were not only targeting human lives, but
also the basic values of open societies. In these dark hours of grief
and wrath, political leaders are called upon to protect both:
Citizens' lives and citizens' freedom.
Terrorists' attack on open societies cannot be completed but with
help from ourselves, and from our political leaders. This must not
happen.
In the ongoing debate on how terrorism is best fought, one option
proposed by certain circles comprieses strenghtening signal
intelligence capabilities. According to these circles, the
eavesdropping capabilities available to law enforcement and the
intelligence community are insufficient for uncovering and monitoring
communication of today's distributed and highly organized groups of
terrorists and criminals.
Availability of virtually unbreakable encryption products to the
general public is perceived as a major obstacle in the current battle
against terrorism.
This perception is highly misleading. Any legislative activity based
on it will inevitably fail to reach its goal. Instead, such activity
would undermine basic values of free and open societies, such as
citizens' right to privacy and private communication.
Such legislative activity would ignore the ample evidence that the
problem of today's intelligence is not a lack of signal intelligence,
but a lack and neglection of human intelligence and intelligent
interpretation of the material collected.
Even the most sophisticated signal interception technology available
will hardly be able to thwart stone age style secure channels used by
terrorists, such as human couriers and confidential face-to-face
meetings.
Cryptography is a key enabling technology for a safe information
society. Obstructing the use of practically unbreakable encryption as
a means of securing electronic communications will make our modern,
information-based economies and societies even more susceptible to
cyber criminals' and terrorists' attacks.
Stopping the spread of strong cryptography would amount to blasting
holes into the civilized world's already-thin defense shield against
digital harm.
We therefore urge political leaders and policy-makers not to restrict
citizens' and businesses' freedom to communicate privately, using the
best technology available.
Our societies and economies need this technology and its widespread
use in order to defend against tomorrow's digital attacks.
About FITUG
FITUG creates connections to the virtual world of new media and data
networks. From our statues: "The association's purpose is the
fostering of the integration of new media with society, public
education about technologies, risks, and dangers of these media, and
the fostering of human rights and consumer interests with respect to
computer networks." FITUG is a member of the Global Internet Liberty
Campaign (GILC).
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