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Congress mulls crypto restrictions in response to attack

------- 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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