Wired: Congress Mulls Stiff Crypto Laws
Owen Blacker
owen.blacker at wheel.co.uk
Fri, 14 Sep 2001 11:29:48 +0100
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| 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 US 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
| <http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/binladen/>, who US
| officials say <http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,41658,00.html>
| 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 <http://gregg.senate.gov/>
| (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."
|
| Gregg, the GOP's chief deputy whip, predicted that without such a
| requirement, "the quantum leap that has occurred in the capacity to
| encrypt information" will frustrate the US government's efforts to
| preserve the safety of Americans.
|
| Gregg's speech comes at a time when privacy and national security, long
| at odds, had reached an uneasy detente. In response to business pressure
| and the reality of encryption embedded into everything from Linux to new
| Internet protocols, the Clinton administration dramatically relaxed --
| but did not remove -- regulations intended to limit its use and
| dissemination.
|
| Janet Reno, Clinton's attorney general, said in September 1999 that the
| new regulations struck a reasonable balance between privacy and security.
| "When stopping a terrorist attack or seeking to recover a kidnapped
| child, encountering encryption may mean the difference between success
| and catastrophic failures," Reno said at a White House briefing. "At the
| same time, encryption is critically important for protecting our privacy
| and our security."
|
| Now the balance has abruptly shifted -- and new laws that were
| unthinkable just three days ago are, suddenly, entirely plausible. As a
| measure of how suddenly the political winds have shifted from business to
| national security, consider this: Gregg recently has won 100 percent
| ratings from the National Federation of Independent Business and the US
| Chamber of Commerce.
|
| An Associated Press dispatch on Thursday, written by Dafna Linzer,
| reports: "These days, terrorists can download sophisticated encryption
| software on the Internet for free, making it increasingly difficult to
| tap into their communications."
|
| The Los Angeles Times, in an article by Charles Piller and Karen Kaplan,
| predicted "calls for new restrictions on software encryption."
|
| Frank Gaffney <http://www.security-policy.org/fjgbio.html>, head of the
| Center for Security Policy <http://www.security-policy.org/>, a hawkish
| think tank that has won accolades
| <http://www.security-policy.org/acclaim.html> 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 US government have
| access to encrypted material under appropriate circumstances and
| regulations," says Gaffney, an assistant secretary of defense under
| President Reagan.
|
| Gaffney said that he's unsure, however, if a global encryption-
| -restriction regime is wise: "I'm not sure if I'm in favor of trying
| to foster an international regime whereby hostile governments, or for
| that matter governments that may not be hostile at the moment but may be
| hostile in the future, can take advantage of backdoors."
|
| Instead of privacy being in the minds of legislators, as it was until
| Tuesday, domestic security concerns have become paramount.
|
| The four hijacked airplanes and the disasters they created have abruptly
| returned the debate on Capitol Hill to where it was years ago, when FBI
| Director Louis Freeh spent much of his time telling anyone who would
| listen that terrorists were using encryption -- and Congress should
| approve restrictions on domestic use.
|
| "We are very concerned, as this committee is, about the encryption
| situation, particularly as it relates to fighting crime and fighting
| terrorism," Freeh told the Senate Judiciary committee
| <http://judiciary.senate.gov/> in September 1998. "Not just bin Laden,
| but many other people who work against us in the area of terrorism, are
| becoming sophisticated enough to equip themselves with encryption
| devices."
|
| He added: "We believe that an unrestricted proliferation of products
| without any kind of court access and law enforcement access, will harm
| us, and make the fight against terrorism much more difficult."
|
| In response to the FBI director'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.
|
| Another Clinton administration initiative was the Clipper Chip
| <http://www.epic.org/crypto/clipper/>, a cryptographic device that
| included both a data-scrambling algorithm and a method for certain
| government officials to decode intercepted, Clipper-encoded
| communications. After a public outcry, the federal government eventually
| abandoned its plans to try to convince American businesses to build
| Clipper-enabled products.
|
| Gregg, in his speech Thursday, said that the kind of court oversight
| Clipper was intended to have would let "our people have the technical
| capability to get the keys to the basic encryption activity."
|
| It's far too early to know how serious foes of encryption are, what kind
| of a hearing business and privacy lobbyists will receive on Capitol Hill,
| and whether Democratic and Republican leaders will encourage or
| discourage Gregg's approach. But some of encryption's brightest lights
| are already worrying about the effect of Draconian new laws and
| regulations.
|
| In a post to a cryptography mailing list that he moderates, Perry Metzger
| wrote: "Cryptography must remain freely available to all."
|
| "In coming months, politicians will flail about looking for freedoms to
| eliminate to 'curb the terrorist threat.' They will see an opportunity to
| grandstand and enhance their careers, an opportunity to show they are
| 'tough on terrorists,'" wrote Metzger, president of Wasabi Systems
| <http://www.wasabisystems.com/> of New York City. "We must remember
| throughout that you cannot preserve freedom by eliminating it."
|
| During the early and mid 1990s, when e-mail was a rarity and good
| encryption programs even more scarce, it was easy for encryption's
| proponents to argue that terrorists and other malcontents were not
| cloaking their communications. Now, with readily available applications
| like hushmail.com <http://www.hushmail.com/> and PGP
| <http://www.pgp.com/>, crypto buffs are left with one less argument than
| before.
|
| Matt Blaze <http://www.research.att.com/info/mab>, the AT&T Research
| scientist who was a chief critic of Clipper, said in an essay this week
| that: "I believed then, and continue to believe now, that the benefits to
| our security and freedom of widely available cryptography far, far
| outweigh the inevitable damage that comes from its use by criminals and
| terrorists."
|
| Wrote Blaze: "I believed, and continue to believe, that the arguments
| against widely available cryptography, while certainly advanced by people
| of good will, did not hold up against the cold light of reason and were
| inconsistent with the most basic American values."
|
| In an open letter this week, cypherpunk co-founder Eric Hughes offered a
| public plea not to restrict privacy or anonymity -- such as that offered
| by anonymous remailers -- in an attempt to preserve national security.
|
| "We will find that there are internal champions of liberty that have
| without conspiracy or knowledge furthered the plans of our opponents, who
| have taken advantage of the liberties that America offers all who enter
| her shores," Hughes predicted.
|
| Copyright (c) 2001 Wired Digital Inc., a Lycos Network site. All rights
| reserved. <http://hotwired.lycos.com/home/copyright.html>
|
| [ends]
- --
Owen Blacker
Senior Software Developer / InfoSec Consultant Wheel: Clerkenwell
See http://www.owens-place.org.uk/pgp.html -- more about my PGP keys
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