Pubdate:9897

Source:Orange County Registermetro,page   Even as Congress has been moving toward guaranteeing Americans right 
to private communications,the FBI has been wor In the age of the 
Internet and other digital communications, privacy means encryption: 
using computer codes to keep messages secret.  If people and 
businesses cannot reliably encrypt their email messages, phone 
conversations and Internet searches, then their freedom to 
communicate is restricted.

For five years the Clinton administration has advocated  and enforced 
controls only on exports of encryption codes. But last week FBI Director
Louis Freeh upped the ante, advocating controls on domestic use of
encryption. He gave testimony before the Senate subcommittee on technology,
terrorism and government information.

Mr. Freeh warned of the "specter of the widespread use of robust, virtually
unbreakable encryption." The threat would "allow drug lords, spies,
terrorists and even violent gangs to communicate about their crimes and
their conspiracies with impunity." He called for "key recovery encryption."
This is a new term for an old idea the Clinton administration long has
pushed, formerly called "key escrow." It means a person or a business's
decoding "keys" would be given to a third party such as a bank. The
government could then access the "key" to uncode a message.

"What Freeh is asking for would basically strip everyone's privacy,"
Stanton McCandlish, program director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation,
told us. "Just about everyone knows how encryption is essential for digital
commerce, and is being built into the next generation of phones and word
processors."

What about the terrorist threat Mr. Freeh mentioned? "Freeh likes to
pretend that the only investigative means available is wiretapping," Mr.
McCandlish said. "In fact, it's one of the least used." And, foreign
terrorists already have access to encryption methods  largely unrestricted
in other countries.

Most troubling, California Sen. Dianne Feinstein backs stronger controls,
despite the fact that Netscape, PGP Inc. and other companies using or
developing encryption codes are abased in California. "Nothing other than
some kind of mandatory key recovery really does the job," she said at the
hearing.

But Congress should reject the repressive advice of Mr. Freeh and Sen.
Feinstein. Instead, it should enact one of two bills, now under
consideration, that would guarantee Americans' right to encrypt: House
Resolution 695, by Rep. Bob Goodlatte of Virginia and Senate Bill 376, be
Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont.

Orange County's cybersavvy representatives  especially Rep. Chris Cox of
Newport Beach  should take the lead in pushing these bills through
Congress. The right to freedom of speech guaranteed by the First Amendment
implies the right to private speech.