Until the Cows come home... free-range crypto (NYT coverage) July 23, 1997 House Panel Rebuffs Clinton on Encryption By JERI CLAUSING W ASHINGTON - The House International Relations Committee yesterday rebuffed the Clinton administration's push to control computer encryption technology, approving a bill that would remove export controls on the secret codes that President Clinton's law enforcement and security chiefs insist are the next generation's biggest threat to national security. After nearly two hours of debate, the committee rejected on a 22-to-13 vote an amendment that would have given the President the final authority to block export of software or encryption technologies if he found that the out-of-country sales would threaten national security. The bill's sponsor, Representative Bob Goodlatte, a Virginia Republican., said the amendment by Benjamin Gilman, the New York Republican who is the committee chairman, represented an antiquated policy that would give other countries the lead in developing technology to prevent the type of crimes that he said are already rampant on the Internet. Strong, unregulated encryption, he said, is needed to protect credit card transactions, medical records, the New York Stock Exchange and the country's power grids, which he said are not now secure. "This is a major crime-fighting measure and I wish that our law enforcement agencies would get on the right side of it," Goodlatte said. Representative Zoe Lofgren, Democrat of California, who, along with more than 190 other representatives is co-sponsoring the Goodlatte bill, told the committee that the "technology has moved past our ability to legislate it." The vote came after intense lobbying from Clinton's top crime fighter for the Gillman amendment. Heads of the FBI, the National Security Agency, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Secret Service, Customs, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms joined the Defense Department in signing letters to the committee pushing for a more "balanced" approach. The Administration is supporting a Senate bill that would retain some export controls and create a key recovery system that would ask companies to hand over their secret security codes to a third party. Backers of the bill, including Senators Bob Kerrey, Democrat of Nebraska, and John McCain, Republican of Arizona, say the keys are necessary for crime fighters to intercept and crack the secret communications of terrorists and international drug cartels. Tuesday's committee heaing, which included testimony from the FBI, NSA and the DEA, degenerated to a seemingly unending string of barn yard analogies about the proliferation of encryption technology. "The cow is out of the barn,'' said Representative Bradley Sherman, Democrat of California. "Is our response to be so frustrated that you want to burn down the barn?" Representative Steven Rothman, responded, ""if the barn is full of cows and one gets out, do we open the door now and let them all out?'' "They're out all over everywhere," retorted Lofgren. "They're being born all over the world. So there's plenty of beef everywhere.'' Representative Alcee Hastings, Repubical of Washington, finally succeeded in ending the debate, asking Gilman for a vote "so we are not here until the cows come home" But the encryption debate could well last that long. Goodlatte's bill still has three more House committee referrals. And it faces strong competition in the Senate from the Kerrey-McCain bill. "We want to work with the administration on any reasonable provisions,'' Goodlatte said. "But the principles of allowing American industries to compete with foreign competition, of protecting the Internet, making it more secure, and protecting the privacy of American citizens have got to be contained in any final legislation," Goodlatte said. ______________________________________________________________ Jeri Clausing at jeri@nytimes.com welcomes your comments and suggestions. ______________________________________________________________ Copyright 1997 The New York Times Company