From: Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>
Date: Thu, 11 Sep 1997 06:51:47 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Building in Big Brother, from The Netly News
Message-ID: <Pine.GSO.3.95.970910153637.17580P-100000@well.com>
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http://cgi.pathfinder.com/netly/opinion/0,1042,1385,00.html

The Netly News Network (http://netlynews.com/)
September 10, 1997

Building in Big Brother
By Declan McCullagh (declan@well.com)
  
        The U.S. Congress, bowing to law enforcement demands for more
   wiretap powers, is preparing to approve a scheme that endangers the
   personal freedom of every American.
   
        Nobody doubts that wiretaps are useful tools for law enforcement
   agents. FBI Director Louis Freeh, who as a young agent built his
   career on them, knows this well.
   
        But Freeh's plan would expand the FBI's eavesdropping ability by
   building Big Brother into every word processor, every e-mail program
   and every web browser. All computer software distributed after 1998
   would have a special, secret backdoor for government access to your
   most private files. Even your Internet provider would be deputized as
   a cyber-snoop. It's the technological equivalent of requiring that
   every homeowner turn over a spare copy of his front door key to the
   FBI.
   
        This is the same FBI that has a long and disturbing history of
   abusing Americans' privacy. As director, J. Edgar Hoover built a
   successful career out of illegal wiretaps, secret files and political
   blackmail. Hoover despised Martin Luther King, Jr. -- branding him an
   "obsessive degenerate" -- and once sent him an anonymous letter, using
   information gathered through illegal surveillance, to encourage the
   depressed civil rights leader to commit suicide. Hoover's legacy?
   Having the FBI headquarters bear his name today.

[...]