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SAFE rewritten to be more law-enforcement friendly
Alex Bischoff writes "According to this article, SAFE (the Security and Freedom through Encryption act) has been rewritten to be more law enforcement friendly. 'The House Armed Services Committee voted 47-6 Wednesday to replace an industry-endorsed encryption bill with substitute legislation drafted by law enforcement advocates.' " And for once, it looked like the US Gov't was going to get a /clue/ about crypto.
Five committees have passed versions of this bill. The Rules Committee decides which one to send to the entire House, and they are friendly(er) towards the bill. It almost certainly won't be the fascist inspired version from the Armed Services committee.
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Infuriate left and right
You think that they don't know that if you use strong encryption that they can't read your email? Of course they know that. But they don't care that you don't want them to read your email. They want to be able to read it, screw you. And they realize that few enough people care today that they can go ahead and abridge rights now, and then people will never have them later to miss... they can seize the right now, before people realize they have it. And they know that if most people never become accustomed to it, they won't ever want it or miss it.
If you never saw a computer, never used email, and nobody else did, then you wouldn't miss it. If someone took it away from you now, you'd be pretty angry. I know I would. And it is the same way with all sorts of rights -- if people learn that they have a right, they will fight to keep it, however if they never think they have a right they won't really care.
Why do you think it's so hard to take away guns from people here in the US? Because it's our right to have guns. Law abiding citizens have the right, given to us by our government, to own firearms. I don't know if that was a good idea, and that isn't the point of the argument. The point is that when the government makes movements to abridge that right, people get angry. Because they have learned to exercise the right.
-- Erich
Slashdot reader since 1997
Yes, indeed, they do. Win 98 includes Internet Explorer (remember, it's a part of the OS...repeat that enough times and you might believe it). Internet Explorer is an HTTPS client, and thus has SSL encryption. Now, are there two strengths of Win98/IE, one for domestic and one for foreign?
And so what if they did ship Win98 with the full 128-bit crypto? The government seems to have little control over Microsoft anyhow. Would the DOJ come by and issue a cease-and-desist?
Win98 ships with IE. IE ships with cryptography. The state department defines cryptography as a munition. Win98 comes with munitions.
Or, in short, Win98 bombs.
--The basis of all love is respect
Notes from the article:
"Proliferation of encryption technology would harm our ability to gather vital intelligence, jeopardize our early threat warning and attack assessment, risk our ability to maintain an information-based advantage over our enemies, and place our nation's most secure systems at risk," said Representative Curt Weldon (R-Pennsylvania), who introduced the amendment.
Bullcrap. Our enemies already have encryption that's probably good enough to hide what they're doing, if they want to use it. And if they haven't got it yet, they can order the books from Amazon.com and code it in themselves! Do all US Reprehensibles think the enemies of the US are stupid?
The version approved by the House Armed Services Committee would grant the president complete authority to deny any expert controls that he considers "contrary to the national security interests of the United States."
So the Prez will have dictatorial control over that aspect of our lives. Sieg heil!
Weldon's bill contains no domestic restrictions on encryption, but the measure is hardly what tech firms had hoped for.
Hmmm.. guess they haven't figured out a way around that pesky 1st Amendment yet, or they'd ban domestic encryption too....
It says any White House export decision cannot be challenged in court -- an attempt to block lawsuits like one brought by a math professor that won a recent victory in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
THIS is what burns me up. Either is is blatently unconstitutional, or we need to shoot the buggers and start from scratch. NO law or decision should be immune from challenge in court -- that's what the bloody courts are for in the first place!
I'll say it again... it's time for us to head for the moon and live there.
I think that the Open Source community should try and come up with a really heavyweight encryption algorithm outside the US.
GNUpg is already out there. It looks to be as strong, and more versitile than PGP.
Abject stupidity is the only explaination of US crypto policy. They might as well ban the export of sand to the middle east.
The only people they are hurting in the name of US national security is the citizens of the US.
You are absolutely right that, for any saavy internet user, the US export restrictions are a joke -- just surf over to a non-US site and grab any crypto you want.
What the US restrictions are effective in doing, however, is to cripple the development of cheap, commercial, embedded crypto. No US company want to develop a domestic-only product, that will qualify as munitions per export regulations. So they don't bother.
So, are the export restrictions effectiving in preventing all use of crypto? No. Are they effectiving in keeping the Bad Guys from using crpto? No. But, they are highly effective in preventing the widespread use of crypto. They are highly effective in preventing the use of strong crypto in part of the underlying communications infractructure.
I will leave it as an exercise to the reader to determine for themselves if we have this situation because the spooks at the NSA are so darn clever, or because the politicians in Congress are so darn stupid.
Of course, and here is where it gets sad, there's another problem:
It's not the "government" that doesn't want us to have any rights, it's the majority of the American population. You think there's any way in this universe that the First Amendment would pass if it were being proposed as law today? "What Communist drivel!" would be the likely response to it.
I'm fully aware that for various reasons the FBI's probably got a file on me (due to my connection with organizations that are "subversive" or perceivable-as-such, and possibly my ex-boyfriend who has ties to the IRA and probably has an even-more-interesting file on HIM lying around in some corner of the FBI).
I'm also fully aware that I held a job in a secured area of a bank, a job that required me to be bonded, with no problem.
I'm not paranoid about the "government" or "law enforcement." Not yet. I AM "paranoid" about the grassroots conspiracy in this country to take away our rights. It's much more of a threat to the not-so-average American, which probably includes most if not all
"Somebody exploded a letter-bomb today
It's just unbelievable to me that they really think they can do anything about strong encryption in other countries with these dumbass laws. Either they are, as you say, idiots or they have a different agenda in mind.
The only thing that these laws seem to accomplish is to prevent U.S. companies from putting strong encryption into their mainstream products in order to (a) avoid managing two versions and (b) avoid the legal liability of accidental exports of the products.
Therefore, I think this law is aimed at us, the regular citizens of the United States, rather then foreign countries. While there are undoubtedly "useful idiots" helping in this effort, I'm afraid it is optimistic to conclude that idiocy is the core problem. The real problem is people who don't want to be inconvenienced in reading our "private" correspondence.
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