[1448] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
The House National Security Committee guts SAFE
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Steven Bellovin)
Tue Sep 9 21:21:11 1997
To: cryptography@c2.net
Date: Tue, 09 Sep 1997 20:07:16 -0400
From: Steven Bellovin <smb@research.att.com>
------- Forwarded Message
======================================================
14:19 09 Sep US HOUSE NATIONAL SECURITY PANEL VOTES TO TIGHTEN ENCRYPTION
EXPORT CONTROLS
14:55 09 Sep House Security panel votes for encryption controls
WASHINGTON, Sept. 9 (Reuter) - The House National Security Committee on
Tuesday approved an amendment that would tighten strict U.S. export
controls on computer encoding technology, dealing a surprise setback to
legislation that would have relaxed the limits.
On a 45 to 1 vote, the committee adopted an amendment from Rep. Curt
Weldon, Republican of Pennsylvania, and Rep. Ron Dellums, Democrat of
California, that would condition all exports of coding technology on the
potential for harm to national security.
Software companies, civil libertarians and Internet user groups were
stunned by the amendment, which they said gutted the bill under
consideration.
Coding technology, or encryption, uses mathematical formulas to scramble
information such as electronic mail or a credit card number sent over the
Internet to prevent hackers from stealing the information.
Encryption has become an increasingly critical means of securing online
commerce and global comunications.
Under current policy, U.S. companies can only export encryption products
offering a weak degree of protection, unless the products also allow the
government to covertly decode any coded message.
The Weldon-Dellums amendment requires the President to set "the maximum
level of encryption strength that could be exported from the United States
.... without harm to the national security of the United States."
Products at or below the established level could be exported after a
one-time review specified by the Secretary of Commerce with the concurrence
of the Secretary of Defense.
The President would be required to review the established level annually
to determine if it should be changed without harming national security.
Rep. Weldon said during the committee debate that the amendment would
break "the untenable link" between export limits and the current policy
promoting so-called key recovery, a means of allowing government access to
coded messages.
Weldon said his amendment did not "satisfy totally" the Clinton
administration, "but the administration sees this as a step in the right
direction and they fully support it."
Without his amendment, Weldon said the bill would "give every rogue
agent and every rogue operation in the world the ability to encrypt their
information in such a way that it would harm our national security and our
ability to deal in real time in the intelligence world."
The only member of the committee who voted against the amendment was
Rep. Adam Smith, Democrat of Washington. Smith said U.S. export controls
would be ineffective since foreign companies would sell to those customers
not served by U.S. companies.
Representatives of software companies were aghast after the vote. "This
is a disaster," said Rebecca Gould, vice president for public policy at the
Business Software Alliance.
"This was a bold step backwards," said Alan Davidson, staff counsel at
the Center for Democracy and Technology, a cyberspace civil liberties
group. "It is worse than the status quo. It codifies into law a bad
standard."
The original bill, authored by Rep. Bob Goodlatte, a Virginia
Republican, would allow U.S. companies to export encryption products that
are commercially available from foreign suppliers.
The bill was previously approved by the Judiciary and International
Relations Committee and will be considered by the Commerce and Select
Intelligence Committees later this week. Then the bill moves to the Rules
Committee, which will have the delicate task of deciding what version of
the bill to report to the House floor.
Proponents of the Goodlatte bill hope the Rules Committee will strip out
the Security Committee's amendment and send the bill to the floor with the
provisions to relax export controls. A majority of members of the Rules
Committee are among the 251 co-sponsors of the original Goodlatte bill but
it is not certain what the committee will do.
-- Aaron Pressman ((202-898-8312))
Tuesday, 9 September 1997 14:19:57
ENDS [nWAT4667]
