From: Bill Stewart <stewarts@ix.netcom.com>
Date: Fri, 20 Jun 1997 15:13:42 +0800
To: "David Downey" <digital_matrix@hotmail.com>
Subject: Re: Senate panel nixes ProCODE II, approves McCain-Kerrey bill
In-Reply-To: <199706200615.XAA25232@f10.hotmail.com>
Message-ID: <3.0.2.32.19970619235211.006df204@popd.ix.netcom.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



At 11:15 PM 6/19/97 PDT, David Downey wrote:
>Maybe I'm just paranoid, but doesn't this mean that it is now illegal to 
>use anything over 56 bits in the US, and doesn't this give the US 
>Government the unofficial green light to start cracking down on those of 
>us that use encryption? 

No.  It means that a couple of Senators don't like free speech and privacy,
and there have been Senators who disliked those before.
If the whole Senate passes the bill, and the House, and the President
signs it, then there'd be a law we'd have to fight in court,
depending on what it said by the time it was done.
But that's a long way off (probably.)  Of course, if the bill does
get through the House and Senate, Clinton's sure to sign it;
he's _not_ a liberal, just a big-spending Democrat, and seems to
consistently support anti-privacy decisions, and if there's enough
wind blowing in the direction to get the Congress to agree on it,
he'll be following it.

Meanwhile, the US Gov't can already start blaming crypto users for being
Commie-supporting money-laundering assassin-funding child pornographers,
if it thinks it's got a case.  Don't need any new laws for that,
though there aren't any solid court decisions on whether they can
force someone to reveal their passwords, and they risk being harassed about
false arrest and such if they maliciously accuse someone.



#			Thanks;  Bill
# Bill Stewart, +1-415-442-2215 stewarts@ix.netcom.com
# You can get PGP outside the US at ftp.ox.ac.uk/pub/crypto/pgp
#   (If this is a mailing list or news, please Cc: me on replies.  Thanks.)