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[FYI] (Fwd) Congress mulls crypto restrictions in response to attack
- To: debate@lists.fitug.de
- Subject: [FYI] (Fwd) Congress mulls crypto restrictions in response to attack
- From: "Axel H Horns" <horns@ipjur.com>
- Date: Thu, 13 Sep 2001 23:40:54 +0200
- CC: krypto@thur.de
------- Forwarded message follows -------
Date sent: Thu, 13 Sep 2001 16:59:26 -0400
To: cryptography@wasabisystems.com
From: Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>
Subject: Congress mulls crypto restrictions in response to attacks
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,46816,00.html
Congress Mulls Stiff Crypto Laws
By Declan McCullagh (declan@wired.com)
1:45 p.m. Sep. 13, 2001 PDT
WASHINGTON -- The encryption wars have begun.
For nearly a decade, privacy mavens have been worrying that a
terrorist attack could prompt Congress to ban
communications-scrambling products that frustrate both police
wiretaps and U.S. intelligence agencies.
Tuesday's catastrophe, which shed more blood on American soil than
any event since the Civil War, appears to have started that
process.
Some politicians and defense hawks are warning that extremists
such as Osama bin Laden, who U.S. officials say is a
crypto-aficionado and the top suspect in Tuesday's attacks, enjoy
unfettered access to privacy-protecting software and hardware that
render their communications unintelligible to eavesdroppers.
In a floor speech on Thursday, Sen. Judd Gregg (R-New Hampshire)
called for a global prohibition on encryption products without
backdoors for government surveillance.
"This is something that we need international cooperation on and
we need to have movement on in order to get the information that
allows us to anticipate and prevent what occurred in New York and
in Washington," Gregg said, according to a copy of his remarks
that an aide provided.
President Clinton appointed an ambassador-rank official, David
Aaron, to try this approach, but eventually the administration
abandoned the project.
Gregg said encryption makers "have as much at risk as we have at
risk as a nation, and they should understand that as a matter of
citizenship, they have an obligation" to include decryption
methods for government agents. Gregg, who previously headed the
appropriations subcommittee overseeing the Justice Department,
said that such access would only take place with "court
oversight."
[...]
Frank Gaffney of the Center for Security Policy, a hawkish think
tank that has won accolades from all recent Republican presidents,
says that this week's terrorist attacks demonstrate the government
must be able to penetrate communications it intercepts.
"I'm certainly of the view that we need to let the U.S. government
have access to encrypted material under appropriate circumstances
and regulations," says Gaffney, an assistant secretary of defense
under President Reagan.
[...]
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