[2256] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
White House to discuss crypto-regs with ACP
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Declan McCullagh)
Wed Mar 4 16:45:45 1998
Date: Wed, 4 Mar 1998 13:18:14 -0800 (PST)
From: Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>
To: cryptography@c2.net
===========
http://cgi.pathfinder.com/netly/afternoon/0,1012,1782,00.html
The Netly News / Afternoon Line
March 4, 1998
Might Makes Right
Congress rarely does the right thing for the right reason.Instead,
lobbyists vie to make voting the wrong way too politically costly for
legislators.
Now a new coalition, called Americans for Computer Privacy, is
trying out this strategy on encryption legislation. The group of high
tech firms and nonprofit groups aims to convince lawmakers that
supporting restrictions on either the domestic use or overseas
shipment of encryption productions is too politically painful.
"We would not turn the keys to our front doors over the
government. Why should we have to turn over the keys to our
computers?" asked ACP counsel and former White House lawyer Jack
Quinn.
To convince Americans that ACP's answer is the right one, the
coalition has gathered together an advisory panel of former spooks and
law enforcement agents.
Quinn told the Netly News that his strategy has already won
results: "Senior officials at the National Security Council and the
vice president's office" this morning signaled they're willing to sit
down at the table for a friendly chat about crypto-laws. --By Declan
McCullagh/Washington
Loin-cloth
One lawmaker who doesn't seem to have much of a sense of humor about
titillating web sites is Sen. Lauch Faircloth (R-N.C.). When his
presumably technology-impaired staffer stumbled across whitehouse.com
and found not Hillary Clinton's child care proposals but a doctored
photo of Hillary in leather, Faircloth decided to take action. "I plan
to introduce legislation that would ban the assignment of popular
government agency names to anyone," he told The Netly News after
speaking at an Internet child safety seminar this afternoon. "Can you
imagine how many people have thought they were contacting the White
House only to see that?" A better question might be which site is the
more popular one. --By Declan McCullagh/Washington
