USIS Washington File - TEXT: AARON SAYS ENCRYPTION PROTECTS PRIVACY, COMMERCE 

...strong encryption also poses serious dangers for public safety. Law enforcement's use of electronic surveillance is and has been an essential tool in terrorism cases and many criminal investigations. Encryption threatens to take this tool away -- not only preventing court-authorized surveillance but also more frequent lawful searches and seizures of computers and their files.

Already our U.S. Justice Department and drug enforcement agencies have encountered important examples of instances where encryption has been used by terrorists, drug traffickers, child pornographers, and other criminals. For example, Ramzi Yousef, a key figure in the World Trade Center bombing and an employee of Osama Bin Laden, used encryption to conceal his plans to blow-up 11 U.S. airliners in Southeast Asia.

We expect the criminal use of unbreakable encryption to increase as it becomes widely available and easy to use. For a country like Germany which is the target of foreign mafias and has been the site of numerous terrorist incidents, the elimination of any possible use of lawful police surveillance poses obvious dangers.