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More restrictive controls on cryptography proposed in US Senate
Senator Grassley has proposed a bill S974 "The Anti-Electronic Racketeering
Act":
>S974 prohibits the distribution of "computer software that encodes or
>encrypts electronic or digital communications to computer networks that
>the person distributing the software knows or reasonably should know,
>is accessible to foreign nationals and foreign governments,
>regardless of whether such software has been designated as
>nonexportable".
[...]
>There is an important exception though. S974 allows distribution if
>the software contains a "universal decoding device". It is assumed that
>key escrow schemes such the now-infamous "Clipper Chip" are the target of
>this statement.
The material above is taken from the "Voters Telecommunication Watch"
analysis. (I got the first announcement in VTW BillWatch Issue #9, Date:
Sat Jul 15) For the full text of the bill e-mail: vtw@vtw.org with "send
s974" in the subject line. (For general VTW info see:
http://www.panix.com/vtw/)
It appears that the bill was referred to the Judiciary Committee and action
is not imminent, but it seems this bears watching as it could have an
extremely adverse effect on electronic commerce and network security. One
might read it to outlaw international use of any kind of cryptography
without Clipper-like holes: i.e. the encryption functions of PGP, SSL,
SHTTP, etc.
---
Albert Lunde Albert-Lunde@nwu.edu