Dole Backs Crypto Export

[jya@pipeline.com]

   Financial Times, May 3, 1996, p. 7.


   Dole backs removal of software export ban

   By Louise Kehoe in San Francisco


   Senator Bob Dole, the presumptive Republican presidential
   candidate, yesterday threw his support behind proposed
   legislation to remove US export restrictions on computer
   software used to encode Internet messages.

   The new Security and Freedom through Encryption bill
   introduced yesterday by several Republican senators and
   congressmen, also rejects a controversial Clinton
   administration proposal to enable law enforcement agencies
   to unlock encoded electronic messages.

   For Senator Dole, the encryption bill provides an
   opportunity to seek support from Silicon Valley high-tech
   leaders many of whom backed Mr Bill Clinton in 1992, and to
   boost his election campaign efforts in California.

   "The administration's misguided proposal on encryption
   amounts to a pair of cement shoes for Silicon Valley," said
   Senator Dole. "It seems to me that a new pair of track
   shoes might be a better answer. The administration's big
   brother proposal will literally destroy America's computer
   industry," he said.

   Encryption software is currently classified as "munitions"
   and exports are strictly limited by the US state
   department. US and other western intelligence and law
   enforcement agencies are opposed to the commercial use of
   the most powerful encryption methods which they argue could
   be used to mask criminal or terrorist activities by
   effectively preventing wire-taps.

   However, US software companies maintain that the current
   export restrictions threaten US pre-eminence in the world
   software market.

   A study by the Computer Systems Policy Project, a computer
   industry group, estimated that within four years the US
   economy would lose $60bn in revenues and roughly 216,000
   jobs as a result of encryption export controls.

   Moreover, current regulations, which allow export only of
   "weak" encryption, are unacceptable because such encoding
   has been demonstrated to be ineffective.

   Last year, for example students in France were able to
   break encryption which is used in the export version of
   Netscape Communication's popular Internet browser software.

   The limited availability of strong encryption software is
   also blocking the progress of electronic commerce on the
   Internet, US computer experts argue, because companies and
   individuals are reluctant to make electronic payments over
   the Internet without assurance of security.

   -----