Monday, October 12, 1998

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.

Friday, April 17, 1998

WIRED - The Netizen: Order Out of Chaos

As Deutsche Telekom's monopoly grip on German telephony loosens, and as European Union telecommunications commissioner Martin Bangemann forges policies that will shape Europe's role in the information society, advocates of privacy and free access to information will continue to turn to the CCC for guidance and technical assistance. "In America hackers are perceived as a threat," Müller-Maguhn says. "But here in Germany, we have a more positive view."

Sunday, November 16, 1997

Cypherpunks list - Exporting crypto from Japan : Was Tim May’s offensive racism (was: about RC4)

Ito: By the way, the chip was not "withdrawn from the market." MITI has not approved its export. The imporant point is, a recent regulation called the "Gyousei Tetsuzuki Hou" (translates roughly as, "ministry administrative law/guidelines") makes it illegal for a ministry to regulate or restrict an activity without a clear and easy to understand process and documentation. MITI's current method of "case-by-case" export permission could technically be viewed as a breach of this law/regulation. Also, the "Gyousei Tetsuzuki Hou" has time limits for ministries to respond to requests. I have informed RSA that they could take MITI to court on this one, but as far as I know, they haven't. So, yes, Japanese stooges were involved, but companies such as RSA haven't taken advantage of their legal position in pushing the export of their products from Japan.

Friday, November 14, 1997

38th Chaos Communication Congress