House members back off Goodlatte crypto bill (CNET coverage)

   House members back off Goodlatte crypto bill
   By Reuters
   July 31, 1997, 10:40 a.m. PT
   
   WASHINGTON--Members of the House National Security Committee are
   vowing to oppose legislation to dramatically relax strict U.S. export
   controls on computer encoding technology.
   
   The encryption export bill, authored by Rep. Bob Goodlatte
   (R-Virginia), has already been approved by the Judiciary and
   International Relations Committees but could be severely watered down
   by the National Security panel.
   
   Goodlatte has said he wants to bring the bill to the House floor in
   the fall separately from any amendments added by the National Security
   Committee but that determination will ultimately be made by the Rules
   Committee.
   
   Encryption programs, which scramble information and render it
   unreadable without a password or software key, have become an
   increasingly important means of securing electronic commerce and
   global communications on the Internet. But the scrambling capability
   can also be used by criminals to hide their dealings from law
   enforcement agencies.
   
   The Clinton administration has steadily raised the volume of its
   objections to the Goodlatte bill. In recent weeks, the secretary of
   defense, the attorney general, and the president himself have written
   to lawmakers in favor of exporting so-called strong encryption but
   only if the products let the government decode messages via the
   software keys.
   
   The bill is already backed by a majority of members of the House,
   including 24 members of the national security panel. But at
   yesterday's hearing, no members spoke in favor of the measure,
   although some expressed mixed opinions.
   
   Committee chairman Floyd Spence (R-South Carolina), came close to
   endorsing the software key decoding approach yesterday but urged
   members to withhold final judgment on this legislation "until the
   committee benefits from the expert testimony we are about to receive."
   
   A half-dozen lawmakers decided not to wait and weighed in against the
   bill before hearing from industry experts scheduled to testify in
   favor of the measure. Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-California), called the
   254 cosponsors of the bill a "cabal," adding that "this thing is
   terrible."
   
   Perhaps the harshest critic on the committee was Rep. Curt Weldon
   (R-Pennsylvania), who said "the bill offends me" and of the supporters
   said, "Some of my colleagues have been sold a bill of goods."
   
   Weldon added he had spoken to two cosponsors of the bill, who told him
   they no longer supported the legislation and would ask to be taken off
   the sponsor list. After the hearing, Weldon declined to name the
   members. In the past four months, three other lawmakers have dropped
   off the list.
   
   But a staffer for Goodlatte said late yesterday that no members had
   asked to be removed from the list during the day and four new sponsors
   had been added since Tuesday.
   
   Story Copyright © 1997 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.
   
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