******** http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,33779,00.html Clinton Favors Computer Snooping by Declan McCullagh ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) 6:00 p.m. 19.Jan.2000 PST WASHINGTON -- Visions of stealthy black helicopters landing on your lawn and disgorging Nomex-clad troops to steal your PGP keys aren't just for conspiracy theorists. The Clinton administration wants to be able to send federal agents armed with search warrants into homes to copy encryption keys and implant secret back doors onto computers. "When criminals like drug dealers and terrorists use encryption to conceal their communications, law enforcement must be able to respond in a manner that will not thwart an investigation or tip off a suspect," Attorney General Janet Reno and Deputy Defense Secretary John Hamre wrote in a seven-page letter to Congress. The idea first surfaced in mid-1999, when the Justice Department proposed legislation that allowed them to obtain surreptitious warrants and "postpone" notifying the person whose property they entered for 30 days. The Justice Department's thinking was that if a suspect was using data-scrambling encryption products, the FBI's G-men might need to enter the suspect's home and install software to tap into and decipher scrambled communications. After vocal objections from civil liberties groups, the administration backed away from the controversial plan. The final draft of the Cyberspace Electronic Security Act (CESA) submitted to Congress had removed the secret-search portions. But the White House now appears to think it doesn't need new legislation to enter a suspect's computer. [...] -------------------------------------------------------------------------- POLITECH -- the moderated mailing list of politics and technology To subscribe: send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with this text: subscribe politech More information is at http://www.well.com/~declan/politech/ --------------------------------------------------------------------------
