From: Bill Stewart <bill.stewart@pobox.com>
Date: Sun, 5 Apr 1998 23:28:04 -0700 (PDT)
To: "William H. Geiger III" <whgiii@invweb.net>
Subject: Re: Leahy's Crypto Wake-up Call
In-Reply-To: <199804060308.XAA25459@camel7.mindspring.com>
Message-ID: <3.0.5.32.19980405232651.0089bb10@popd.ix.netcom.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


At 09:37 PM 4/5/98 -0500, William H. Geiger III wrote:
>In <199804060308.XAA25459@camel7.mindspring.com>, on 04/05/98 
>   at 11:08 PM, John Young <jya@pipeline.com> said:
>
>>  Third, legislation should establish both procedures and 
>>standards for access by law enforcement to decryption keys 
>>or decryption assistance for both encrypted communications 
>>and stored electronic information and only permit such access  upon court
>>order authorization, with appropriate notice and  other procedural
>>safeguards;
>
>And just *how* do they plan on doing this without either backdoors or
>escrow??

Easy, Constitutional, and doesn't need any new legislation - 
all you need is a warrant or subpoena to tell anybody to
produce those records and materials they have.
If they didn't save a recording of their telephone call or email,
or think the Fifth Amendment reasonably prohibits them
from being compelled to incriminate themselves,
then the prosecution doesn't get anything.  No problem,
and it's worked quite well for 200+ years.

>>  Fourth, legislation should establish both procedures and 
>>standards for access by foreign governments and foreign law  enforcement
>>agencies to the plaintext of encrypted 
>>communications and stored electronic information of United 
>>States persons;
>
>I think not.
>They just don't get it.

There may be cases where there's some foreign jurisdiction
over communications with US persons, either travellers or
emigrants to those governments' territories, and they can
use whatever methods are locally popular; some of them,
like torture, tend to require strongly worded notes
from the State Department complaining about such behaviour.
But as you say, I think not, and no, they don't get it.

Just because Leahy is willing to allow businesses to export
things doesn't mean he isn't a tool of Big Brother.


				Thanks! 
					Bill
Bill Stewart, bill.stewart@pobox.com
PGP Fingerprint D454 E202 CBC8 40BF  3C85 B884 0ABE 4639