IP: The Crypto Restriction Lobby's new friend

[Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>]

> Date: Fri, 02 Jul 1999 12:58:46 -0400
> To: politech () vorlon mit edu
> From: Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>
>
> There seems to be some confusion about what happened with privacy and the
> banking bill. The sequence of events went as follows:
> 1. Paul/Barr and Markey submit very different proposals to Rules committee
> 2. Rules says Paul/Barr may be introduced as amendment to bill on House floor
> but rejects Markey as not germane
> 3. The Paul/Barr amendment, as I wrote, fails in 129-299 vote late yesterday
> 4. GOP leaders propose amendment to regulate some bank third-party data
> sharing
> practices
> 5. It is attached to banking bill 427-1, with Ron Paul as sole dissenter
> 6. Entire banking bill, HR10, passes House 343-83.
>
> ************
>
> The New York Post
> June 28, 1999, Monday
> Pg. 033
>
> BILL GATES VS. THE DRUG WAR?
> By Robert D. Novak
>
>     THE Drug Enforcement Administration's (DEA) Thomas A. Constantine, 
> a career cop, recently complained to Microsoft's Bill Gates, the 
> world's richest man, that encryption devices sold by his company and 
> used by international drug lords are so powerful that they cannot be 
> deciphered by law enforcement. "Well," replied Gates, "you've got to 
> get bigger computers."
>
>     That is reminiscent of Marie Antoinette's "Let them eat cake!" 
> advice for bread-less French peasants. As Gates knows, no computer is 
> big enough to break Microsoft's new codes. But the Senate and House 
> Commerce committees last week (unreported in the major daily press) 
> approved bills to end export controls over encryption systems to 
> which law enforcement and national security officials have no access. 
> That would give the big drug cartels, now based in Mexico, worry-free 
> communications with their U.S. operatives. 
>
>     Constantine and FBI Director Louis J. Freeh are losing their 
> battle to be able to decipher criminal communications under court 
> order. High-tech campaign money is winning out. The Republican 
> Congress has adopted Gates as its poster boy. Sen. John McCain, 
> seeking the GOP presidential nomination, changed sides three months 
> ago and last week guided anti-control legislation out of the Commerce 
> Committee, which he heads. The normally loquacious President Clinton 
> is silent, as Vice President Al Gore courts Silicon Valley in quest 
> of the presidency.
>
>     Freeh and Constantine are desperate. Wiretapping is law 
> enforcement's biggest weapon, authorized by court order 1,329 times 
> nationwide in 1998 - 72 percent in drug cases. No longer able to 
> infiltrate the narcotics apparatus, the DEA depends on eavesdropping.
>
>     But intercepted conversations now are interrupted by a steady 
> buzz, signifying that intelligible conversation is encrypted. What 
> experts call "level-one encryption" could be decoded, but the drug 
> lords have turned to "level two."
>
> [...]
>
>
>
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