Online Groups Mount an Effort To Fight Clinton on Encryption (NYT)

      
Online Groups Mount an Effort
To Fight Clinton on Encryption

      By JERI CLAUSING Bio
      
     W ASHINGTON Online civil liberties groups, increasingly alarmed by
     the momentum that the Federal Bureau of Investigation has been
     building in the Congressional battle over encryption, will mount a
     telephone lobbying campaign next week.
     
     On Monday, thousands of people are being asked to place calls to
     members of a key House committee, urging them to reject a proposal
     that the groups fear will lay the infrastructure for widespread
     surveillance of citizens by the United States government.
     
     "Stop the government from building Big Brother into the Internet,"
     states an alert that went out on Thursday to more than 200,000
     people on the Internet, urging them to call members of the House
     Commerce Committee.
     
     "In 1948, George Orwell described a future world in which Big
     Brother peaked over the shoulder of every citizen -- watching every
     move and listening to every word," the alert states. "Now, in 1997,
     the FBI is pushing the United States Congress to pass legislation
     which would make George Orwell's frightening vision a reality."
     
     The alert, published by the Center for Democracy and Technology,
     the Voters Telecommunications Watch, the Electronic Frontier
     Foundation, Wired Magazine and Americans for Tax Reform, is just
     the latest in a yearlong campaign to fight the Clinton
     administration's attempts to gain the keys to data-scrambling
     communications technology like the software that keeps e-mail
     private and secures online commerce.
     
     But the tone of the campaign is getting more urgent as the House
     Commerce Committee prepares to take a key vote Thursday on the
     Safety and Freedom Though Encryption act.
     
     That bill was drafted by Representatives Bob Goodlatte, Republican
     of Virginia, and Zoe Lofgren, Democrat of California, to thwart the
     Clinton Administration's efforts by outlawing any key-recovery
     systems for encryption technology and by relaxing current export
     restrictions on encryption software. It was passed by the House
     International Relations and Judiciary committees earlier this
     summer and picked up more than 250 co-sponsors.
     
     In recent weeks, however, it has fallen victim to intense pressure
     from President Clinton's top crime fighters in the FBI and National
     Security Agency who claim they need immediate access to online and
     other communications to catch terrorists and drug dealers.
     
     After a series of classified briefings on Capitol Hill, the
     National Security Committee added an amendment that would actually
     tighten current export controls, and the Permanent Select Committee
     on Intelligence added an amendment that would ban any domestic
     technology that does not provide law enforcement officials with
     "immediate access" to the plain text of encrypted information.
       ______________________________________________________________
     
     This represents the first and final step in the construction of a
     National Surveillance Infrastructure.
     
     Jonah Seiger,
     Center for Democracy and Technology
       ______________________________________________________________
     
     An amendment similar to the Intelligence Committee's proposal has
     been drafted by two Commerce Committee members, Michael Oxley, an
     Ohio Republican, and Thomas Manton, a Queens Democrat, making the
     Commerce vote a tie-breaker that will be key in determining which
     version of the bill gets sent to the full House.
     
     "This is not the end game, but it is a crucial vote," said Jonah
     Seiger of the Center for Democracy and Technology. "We are hoping
     Monday that we at least make some noise."
     
     Seiger added, "The committee members should be aware that
     constituents are watching and following this issue and have
     concerns, and factor that into their decision."
     
     After the votes in the Intelligence and National Security
     committees, the House Commerce Committee won a two-week extension
     of its deadline for acting on the bill, saying it hoped to use the
     time to find a balance between law enforcement and privacy
     concerns.
     
     Both sides said Friday that talks were continuing but that little
     progress was being made.
     
     "It appears we are headed for gridlock, and I think we need to call
     time out here," Seiger said. "Everyone needs to focus on what the
     real issues are. The FBI needs to make its case. They have not yet
     publicly described what their problems are. That needs to happen
     before any law passes."
     
     Seiger said the Oxley-Manton amendment is the "equivalent of
     requiring that all new homes built in the U.S. contain surveillance
     cameras that would be turned on remotely by law enforcement if you
     were suspected committing a crime."
     
     The amendment, Seiger's Internet alert asserts, "is a serious
     threat to your privacy and represents the first and final step in
     the construction of a National Surveillance Infrastructure."
     
     However, Peggy Peterson, a spokeswoman for Oxley, insisted that the
     amendment was being misrepresented.
     
     "The notion that it would allow the FBI to browse through your
     personal communications is way off base," Peterson said. "The FBI
     would have to obtain a court order to conduct any type of
     surveillance, just like they would now in a wiretap case. That's
     the only type of surveillance that could occur. So to say they
     could just sit there and browse through your e-mail is way off
     base."
     
     Peterson defended the FBI's secret briefings as necessary for
     protecting crime-fighting secrets.
     
     "Mr. Oxley came away from that meeting alarmed at the notion that
     pedophiles, organized crime, terrorists, illegal militias could be
     and likely are operating on the Internet right now, beyond the
     reach of law enforcement," Peterson said.
     
     But Lofgren has questioned the need for classified briefings,
     implying that the FBI has not said anything it couldn't reveal
     publicly and is really using the meetings to spread misinformation.
     
     "A lot of members don't understand what is at stake," said a
     Lofgren aide, David Brown. "This is about the privacy of your
     medical records, your banking records, your personal letters. If
     they understood that, if they got the extent of it, I think they
     would come screaming into this debate."
                                      
                 Copyright 1997 The New York Times Company