Re: New crypto bill to be introduced

[jim bell <jimbell@pacifier.com>]

At 06:03 PM 3/28/96 -0500, Declan B. McCullagh wrote:
>At CFP today, we heard about a new crypto bill being introduced
>tomorrow, which will be similar to Leahy's bill with the
>crypto-being-used-in-furtherance-of-crime portion removed and an
>explicit no-government-mandated-escrow provision added.

While this does sound like progress, I'm suspicious.   Peter Junger's 
analysis raised serious doubt as to the ability of bill to open up the 
crypto export market as it purported to.  

And where, exactly, did this these changes come from?  Who was consulted?  
What recommendations were NOT taken?


>We have put our "List of Shame" numbers on our nametags.
>-Declan

You're overdoing it on this "List of Shame" thing.  You don't know 
who actually made those anonymous postings, and it's been observed that 
those names seem to correspond nicely with an NSA-hate list.  It would not 
take a great deal of imagination to conclude that the NSA was motivated to 
de-focus our anger at the Leahy bill and replace it with a great deal of 
back-stabbing commentary.  (If that was the intent, it succeeded...)

On the other hand, I've also noticed that there hasn't been a lot of 
specific analysis of the Leahy bill in the last few weeks, and my suggestion 
that the Leahy bill be informally re-written to address Junger's objections 
(as well as my own, and Tim May's, etc) has not resulted in a great deal of 
repair work.  Now, miraculously, a replacement bill appears that includes 
SOME repairs.  (obviously, we have to wait to hear how most of it comes out...)

I get the impression that we are being sequentially offered ice cream cones 
with decreasing amounts of poison in them, in the hopes that at some point 
we'll bite.  It seems to me that whoever is writing these bills should be 
willing to make a statement about what his goals are, and who he's talking 
to as he crafts them, and what changes he was UNwilling to include.

Jim Bell
jimbell@pacifier.com