By Rachel Chalmers
Export bans on encryption technology are necessary to prevent terrorism and other crimes, US law enforcement officials have told the House Armed Services Committee. Legislation now before Congress would lift WW2-era controls on the export of strong encryption. The controls have created a thriving market for encryption products developed offshore, notably in Ireland, Israel and Australia. Little wonder that leaders of the technology industry support the legislation.
Law enforcement officials do not share their zeal. Now Attorney General Janet Reno has joined her protest to that of longtime encryption opponent, FBI Director Louis Freeh. Terrorists are now actually using encryption, Reno claimed, which means that in the future we may wiretap a conversation in which the terrorists discuss the location of a bomb soon to go off, but we will be unable to prevent the terrorist act because we cannot understand the conversation.
The chair of the committee, Republican representative Floyd Spence, appears to sympathize with those who oppose lifting the encryption ban. It would be both tragically ironic and unconscionable for Congress to make it easier for an adversary to do harm to Americans at the same time we are working as a government to improve security for Americans all over the world, he said. Even so, Spence, Reno and Freeh may be fighting a losing battle. The bill, authored by technology advocate Bob Goodlatte, was later approved by a 33-5 vote of the House International Relations Committee. Three House Committees have now passed the legislation intact, Goodlatte noted.
Those who support lifting the encryption ban note that widespread availability of strong encryption would make it harder for the US National Security Agency (NSA) and its counterparts in the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand to maintain their fifty-year- old global electronic communications surveillance program, Project Echelon. Others have attacked the export controls as a gag on free speech. In May 1999, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled that University of Illinois professor Daniel Bernstein had a constitutional right to publish his encryption software, Snuffle, on the web. Perhaps prodded by the NSA, the Clinton administration has appealed the decision and the ruling has not yet taken effect.
