Wired: Senator Backs Off Backdoors

[Owen Blacker]

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http://www.wired.com/news/conflict/0,2100,47635,00.html

| Senator Backs Off Backdoors
| By Declan McCullagh <declan@wired.com>
| 2:00 a.m. Oct. 17, 2001 PDT
|
| WASHINGTON -- Sen. Judd Gregg has abruptly changed his mind and will
| no longer seek to insert backdoors into encryption products.
|
| A spokesman for the New Hampshire Republican
| <http://gregg.senate.gov/> said Tuesday that Gregg has "no
| intention" of introducing a bill to require government access to
| scrambled electronic or voice communications.
|
| "We are not working on an encryption bill and have no intention to,"
| spokesman Brian Hart said in an interview.
|
| Two days after the Sept. 11 attacks, Gregg strode onto the Senate
| floor and called for
| <http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,46816,00.html> a global
| prohibition on data-scrambling products without backdoors for
| government surveillance. Gregg said that quick action was necessary
| "to get the information that allows us to anticipate and prevent
| what occurred in New York and in Washington."
|
| A few days later, Gregg told <http://makeashorterlink.com/?S22B3161>
| the Associated Press that he was preparing legislation "to give our
| law enforcement community more tools" to unscramble messages in
| hopes of fighting terrorists.
|
| Gregg received support from defense hawks, conservative columnists
| and some newspapers <http://makeashorterlink.com/?R10B2561> and even
| a poll conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates for
| Newsweek magazine.
|
| The poll asked: "Would you favor reducing encryption of
| communications to make it easier for the FBI and CIA to monitor the
| activities of suspected terrorists -- even if it might infringe on
| people's privacy and affect business practices?"
|
| Fifty-four percent of those polled answered "yes," and 72 percent
| said anti-encryption laws would be "somewhat" or "very" helpful in
| thwarting similar terrorist attacks.
|
|
| Complicating the debate were conflicting reports about whether the
| Internet-savvy terrorists who attacked the World Trade Center and the
| Pentagon used encryption. Citing unnamed sources, Reuters reported
| <http://makeashorterlink.com/?J13B2161> "the hijackers did not use
| encryption," while WorldNetDaily claimed
| <http://makeashorterlink.com/?V24B5161> they did.
|
| "There will be some point in the future where a criminal or
| terrorist uses encryption to pull off a horrific crime," says Mike
| Godwin, a policy fellow with the Center for Democracy and Technology
| <http://www.cdt.org/>. "What we have to ultimately recognize is that
| we're safer from those criminals if we have those encryption tools
| than we would be if we didn't have them."
|
| In response to then-FBI director Louis Freeh's entreaties, a House
| committee in 1997 approved a bill that would have banned the
| manufacture, distribution or import of any encryption product that
| did not include a backdoor for the federal government. The full
| House never voted on that measure.
|
| Many cryptographers and legal scholars believed that following a
| catastrophic terrorist attack, the US Congress would move swiftly to
| impose backdoors on anyone manufacturing or distributing encryption
| products -- a requirement that would not only hamstring American
| firms, but wreak havoc in the open-source world.
|
| In a 1995 law review article
| <http://www.law.miami.edu/~froomkin/articles/clipper.htm>,
| University of Miami law professor Michael Froomkin
| <http://www.law.miami.edu/~froomkin/welcome.html> foresaw that
| possibility. He wrote: "In the wake of a great crime, perhaps by
| terrorists or drug cartels -- the detection of which could plausibly
| have been frustrated by encryption -- that which today looks clearly
| unconstitutional might unfortunately appear more palatable."
|
| "I've never been happier to be wrong," Froomkin said Tuesday.
|
| Froomkin said there may be a greater awareness among politicians of
| encryption's double-edged sword: It can cloak the communications of
| criminals, but shield the Internet from miscreants.
|
| "I think if they put a crypto provision in this bill, it would have
| passed," Froomkin said. "Look at what the administration got."
|
| Froomkin was talking about additional eavesdropping and surveillance
| powers requested by the Bush administration, which the Senate and
| the House overwhelmingly voted for
| <http://www.wired.com/news/conflict/0,2100,47549,00.html> last week.
| That bill is called the USA Act
| <http://www.house.gov/rules/sensen_028.pdf>.
|
| After Gregg's floor speech following the Sept. 11 attacks,
| crypto-buffs mobilized to oppose laws limiting encryption.
|
| Rob Carlson, who organized
| <http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,46900,00.html> an
| emergency meeting of activists the following weekend at the
| University of Maryland, said he's relieved to hear Gregg appears to
| have changed his mind.
|
| "I'm glad to hear it's gone. Whether or not it's true is another
| matter," Carlson said. "(Gregg) said he was definitely supporting
| it. Now he says he's definitely not. Maybe he'll say he's definitely
| supporting it again."
|
| Ben Polen contributed to this report.
|
| Copyright (c) 1994-2001 Wired Digital Inc. All rights reserved.
| <http://hotwired.lycos.com/home/copyright.html>

- -- 
Owen Blacker | Senior Software Developer and InfoSecurity Consultant
See http://www.owens-place.org.uk/pgp.html -- more about my PGP keys
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- --
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
 safety deserve neither liberty nor safety --Benjamin Franklin, 1759

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