DTRA, Terrorism, Digital Daily

[John Young <jya@pipeline.com>]

DoD rolled out today the new Defense Threat Reduction
Agency which combines several agencies -- Defense
Special Weapons Agency, Defense Technology Security 
Administration, On-Site Inspection Agency and others --
into a new organization whose principle purpose will be
to control the spread of technologies of mass destruction.

See remarks made at the opening ceremony by Hamre 
and others:

   http://jya.com/dtra100198.htm

And the new, informative DTRA Web site:

   http://www.dtra.mil

The briefing remarks are of interest for what they disclose
about military planning for combating domestic terrorism 
(parallel to what the FBI said about it yesterday), promises 
to speed export licensing and a passing reference by Hamre 
to "a recent ten month process of encryption policy review."
Which may refer to the recent administration policy 
announcement or maybe another in the works.

With the build-up of domestic terrorism fighting forces --
all the mil and gov agencies -- and noises about legislation
being developed for more, it's worth pondering what is
coming with a crackdown on domestic use of encryption.

The Canadian duplicitous announcement today may offer
a clue to what's being secretly agreed upon internationallly: 
state there will be no domestic controls (to assure privacy
and secure commerce) coupled with promises to ease export 
limits (to assure commercial producers), then contradict that
with a statement about new legislation to criminalize
encryption use in the name of "public safety" and provision
for access to encrypted data (to assure national security and 
law enforcement).

Tell all parties what they want to hear in public, then arrange
for what's really going to happen in secrecy among those
responsible parties who know how to bear the terrible burden
of keeping society safe and sound.

Which brings up Time's new "Digital Daily" replacement for
Netley News. News seems to have been eliminated in
favor of entertaining fluff and product promo, even worse
than "mainstream" Time itself. What's up Declan? Has the 
ghost of Luce come back to order Time online to shut up 
reporting unpleasant nefaria and get on with narcotizing 
the masses via Luce's incomparable coy language of
insider duplicity?