Re: SAFE Bill is a Disaster--"Use a cipher, go to prison"

[jimbell@pacifier.com (Jim Bell)]

At 10:09 5/01/97 -0400, Jonah Seiger wrote:
>Tim -
>
>It's too bad we may not see eye-to-eye on this one.
>
>For what it's worth, CDT shares your concerns about the criminal provision
>in the SAFE bill.  We believe that as currently written, the provision is
>overly broad and could create a chilling effect on the everyday use of
>encryption, and  unnecessary because it duplicates existing obstruction of
>justice law.
>
>We have expressed these concerns both publicly (in a letter to the
>committee signed by EPIC, ACLU, EFF, VTW, CDT, and over 20 other
>organizations - see  http://www.privacy.org/ipc/safe_letter.html) and
>privately in conversations with the committee staff.  We hope to work with
>the authors of SAFE to address these concerns, but, as you know, we are not
>running this show and have to work with what the Congress gives us.

There's your error.  No, you don't "have to work with" it.  Simply make your
public support absolutely and completely conditional on the removal of the
bad part.  That's quite easy, isn't it?!?

>
>However, despite our concerns about the criminal provisions, we believe
>strongly that the SAFE bill, and the bills in the Senate sponsored by Burns
>and Leahy, are vitally important and should be passed.

Why?  Tim May said it quite well:  SAFE gives us no rights that we don't
already have, and what it does claim to give us has so many "legitimate
needs of law-enforcement"-type loopholes that it would be almost totally
useless.

It is certainly not "vitally important."  There are some components of SAFE
which would be good to have, IF they can be obtained without the disastrous
component of SAFE which we all know must be removed.

>
>As you know, the debate over encryption policy reform has been going on for
>more than 4 years.  Despite all of our efforts to promote the use of
>encryption, crypto is still not widely used by the public.
>
>The Clinton administration has not backed off from their commitment to a
>global key-escrow/key-recovery system with guaranteed law enforcement
>access to private keys. And despite the brilliant work of EFF on the
>various legal challenges to the export restrictions, we feel this issue
>will only be fully resolved through legislation.
>
>The status quo, in our view, is not good enough. 

Let's not have any backsliding, then!  

Jim Bell
jimbell@pacifier.com