House subcom. passes crypto bill, USDoJ letter to panel

[Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>]

**********

Date: Wed, 30 Apr 1997 19:28:10 -0400
To: fight-censorship-announce@vorlon.mit.edu
From: Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>
X-FC-URL: Fight-Censorship is at http://www.eff.org/~declan/fc/

After all the backroom wrangling that led up to today's markup, the actual
subcommittee vote on legislation that would lift export controls on
encryption was an anticlimax. A House Judiciary subcommittee passed Rep.
Bob Goodlatte's (R-Va) "SAFE" bill unanimously by voice vote. Not one
member of the panel spoke against it -- even after the Justice Department
tried a last-minute lobbying blitz to derail the bill.

It's a tribute to the effectiveness of the high-tech lobbyists that even
Rep. Bill McCollum (R-Fl) didn't slam the bill, as he was itching to do.
Instead he had to be content with huffing: "I'm not saying I'm opposed to
the bill; I want to put up a red flag. There are people in the intelligence
community and criminal justice community who have expressed concerns to
me." He warned he might have amendments later.

And what else could he say? High tech was smart enough to recruit outside
its ranks for unusual allies in its last-minute legislative push. An April
29 letter to the committee urging them to pass the bill included groups
like the National Association of Manufacturers and the National Retail
Federation.

Goodlatte, the bill's chief sponsor, came up to me afterwards and grinned.
"We already have a significant majority of the full committee supporting
this bill," he said. "There's not one member of Congress who's stepped up
and said they're openly opposed to this legislation. None."

(Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Ca) noted that she received a letter from a coalition
of groups criticizing the bill for imposing harsh criminal penalties for
using crypto to further a crime. She vaguely promised to address it later.
That section stayed in.)

But the fight isn't over; rather, it's just beginning. SAFE still has to
clear the full House Judiciary committee, and Sen. Conrad Burns' Pro-CODE
bill has yet to advance in the Senate.

Don't discount the Clinton administration and the Department of Justice --
the largest law firm in the world, with plenty of lobbyists who regularly
swarm onto Capitol Hill to demand expanded police powers. An excerpt from
the DoJ's fearmongering letter sent to the committee today is attached
below.

-Declan

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	April 30, 1997

	Rep. Howard Coble
	Subcommittee on Courts and Intellectual	Property chairman
	House Judiciary Committee

	Your Subcommittee will soon begin mark-up of
	H.R. 695, the "Security and Freedom
	Through Encryption (SAFE) Act." Although
	the Department of Justice supports H.R.
	695's overall goal of promoting the wide
	dissemination of strong encryption, we
	believe that the bill would severely
	compromise law enforcement's ability to
	protect the American people from the
	threats posed by terrorists, organized
	crime, child pornographers, drug cartels,
	financial predators, hostile foreign
	intelligence agents, and other criminals.
	In addition, the bill would greately
	impair the government's ability to
	prosecute those crimes when they do occur.
	We urge the Subcommittee to reject H.R.
	695 in its present form...

	We also oppose H.R. 695 because it would
	impede or prevent the development of a key
	management infrastructure. The bill could
	be read as prohibiting the United States
	government from using appropriate
	incentives to support a key management
	infrastructure and key recovery. Without
	such an infrastructure supporting key
	recovery, federal law enforcement
	investigations will become far more
	difficult. The problems that enactment
	of H.R. 695 would pose for state and local
	law enforcement, which lack access to
	supercomputers, are even greater...

	Sincerely,

	Andrew Fois
	Assistant Attorney General
        Office of Legislative Affairs
        U.S. Department of Justice



-------------------------
Declan McCullagh
Time Inc.
The Netly News Network
Washington Correspondent
http://netlynews.com/


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