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FC: Why did White House change its mind on crypto? Here's an answer...
- To: politech@vorlon.mit.edu
- Subject: FC: Why did White House change its mind on crypto? Here's an answer...
- From: Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>
- Date: Fri, 17 Sep 1999 09:18:24 -0400
- Comment: This message comes from the debate mailing list.
- Reply-To: declan@well.com
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http://www.wired.com/news/news/politics/story/21810.html
Decoding the Crypto Policy Change
by Declan McCullagh (declan@well.com)
3:00 a.m. 17.Sep.99.PDT
Why did the Clinton administration cave
on crypto? What caused the nation's top
generals and cops to back down this
week after spending the better part of a
decade warning Congress of the dangers
of privacy-protecting encryption
products?
Why would attorney general Janet Reno
inexplicably change her mind and embrace
overseas sales of encryption when as
recently as July she warned Congress of
the "rising threat from the criminal
community of commercially available
encryption?"
It can't simply be that tech firms were
pressing forward this fall with a House
floor vote to relax export rules. National
security and law enforcement backers in
the Senate could easily filibuster the
measure. Besides, Clinton had threatened
to veto it.
It could be the presidential ambitions of
Vice President Gore, who just happened
to be in Silicon Valley around the time of
the White House press conference
Thursday. Still, while tech CEOs can get
angry over the antediluvian crypto
regulations Gore has supported, they
regard Y2K liability and Internet taxation
as more important issues.
Another answer might lie in a
little-noticed section of the legislation the
White House has sent to Congress. It
says that during civil cases or criminal
prosecutions, the Feds can use
decrypted evidence in court without
revealing how they descrambled it.
[...]
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