New ACLU Report Challenges Clinton Scare Tactics on Encryption

[Yaman Akdeniz]

This would be of interest to some of you in the list.

Yaman

New ACLU Report Challenges  Clinton Scare Tactics on Encryption

     FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
     Tuesday, March 17, 1998 

     WASHINGTON -- Charging that the Clinton Administration is using
     scare tactics to acquire vast new powers to spy on all Americans,
     the American Civil Liberties Union today issued a white paper on
     the escalating battles over wiretapping in the digital age.

     The new ACLU report -- Big Brother in the Wires -- says that the
     current struggle over cryptography policy holds far-reaching and
     possibly irrevocable consequences for all Americans. It makes an
     impassioned case for limiting the government's ability to seize
     and review private communications -- whether they are telephone
     conversations, FAX messages, electronic mail, electronic fund
     transfers or medical records -- by permitting the use of strong
     encryption.

     The report comes as Congress grapples with fundamental
     disagreements over encryption policy. On one side of the policy
     impasse are the law enforcement and national security agencies --
     the Justice Department, the FBI, the National Security Council,
     the Drug Enforcement Agency and many state and local agencies. On
     the other side are the communications industry, the country's
     leading cryptographers and computer scientists and civil
     liberties and privacy advocates.

     "We are now at an historic crossroads," the report says. "We can
     use emerging technologies to protect our personal privacy, or we
     can succumb to scare tactics and to exaggerated claims about the
     law enforcement value of electronic surveillance and give up our
     cherished rights, perhaps forever."

     The ACLU report is being circulated to key members of Congress in
     an effort to convince them to stand up to law enforcement's
     exaggerated claims and give Americans the right to protect their
     personal communications.

     "If President Clinton and federal law enforcement authorities
     have their way, new technology will make possible a much more
     intrusive and omniscient level of surveillance than has ever been
     possible before," said ACLU Legislative Counsel Gregory T.
     Nojeim.

     "Congress must reject this blatant power grab," Nojeim concluded,
     "and keep Big Brother out of our wires."

                             The ACLU report can be found at:
                             http://www.aclu.org/issues/cyber/wiretap_
                             brother.html
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Yaman Akdeniz <lawya@leeds.ac.uk>
Cyber-Rights & Cyber-Liberties (UK) at:
http://www.leeds.ac.uk/law/pgs/yaman/yaman.htm

Read CR&CL (UK) Report, 'Who Watches the Watchmen'
http://www.leeds.ac.uk/law/pgs/yaman/watchmen.htm
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