[iwar] [fc:Congress-Mulls-Stiff-Crypto-Laws]

From: Fred Cohen (fc@all.net)
Date: 2001-09-13 19:06:45
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From: Fred Cohen <fc@all.net>
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Date: Thu, 13 Sep 2001 19:06:45 -0700 (PDT)
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Congress Mulls Stiff Crypto Laws
By Declan McCullagh

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." 

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 U.S. 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 U.S. 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, head 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. 

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 goverments, 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 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, a
cryptographic device that included both a data-scrambling algorithm and a
method for certain goverment 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 that kind of court oversight that
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 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
and PGP, crypto buffs are left with one less argument than before.

Matt Blaze, the AT&amp;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. 

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