Re: Europe

Perry M. wrote:

> I was wondering if the Europeans had an equivalent of EPIC or EFF
> lobbying against crypto restrictions there, given the disturbing news
> a week or so ago.

Europe, in this regard, is still mostly every country on it's own.
Lobbying in Brussels is not for mortals, and decisions are in
closed chambers anyway (the Commission; inter-governmental level).

Sweden: The authorities have not yet said anything at all about
where they stand in the GAK controversy. Probably very few have
heard about it. A national IT-Commission was formed by the former
government a year and a half ago, then they lost the elections
a year ago and the new IT-Commission (yes, very partisan) has
just settled down. The only thing that has come up on a public
(television) level is demands from the police of access to
decoded GSM traffic, which I believe is under implementation
now (the obstacle has mainly been who is going to pay for the
software updates of the GSM nodes). Sweden has rather strict
rules for wiretapping (at least officially) and their is no
public pressure for any change in this. On the local networks
(the swnet.* newsgroups and Fidonet meetings) there is some
discussion of crypto vs computer networking but only in
obscure niches. If/when GAK will be proposed this might hopefylly
change.

I think the basic difference USA vs Sweden in this regard is a
time delay of some years. We have lots of Internet nodes per
capita (more than in the US, they say) but the net is still
largly run by engineers (if only that could last!) and net
awareness is rare above the age of 30 (i.e. among those who
have a say).

The European Council document (posted here in full by Dave
Banisar) is certainly worrying. Of course, I've tried to
spread it on the Swedish speaking networks 



For information on Swedish net cencorship there is a 'mini-CAF' at:

http://www.dtek.chalmers.se/~d1dd/censorship/

PS
Perry, what was your impression of the Swedes you met at the
IETF meeting in Stockholm last July? I guess they were so
happy about the new 34 Mbit/s connection to the New World
that they forgot about the rest?

Mats
*********************************************************
For a searchable list of products in the Swedish national
monopoly liquor-shops, see:

http://lupus.physchem.kth.se/systemet.html

| Sweden: The authorities have not yet said anything at all about
| where they stand in the GAK controversy. Probably very few have
| heard about it. 

This may surface in the swedish media very soon now. There will 
be an article in Ny Teknik next week about these issues, and they
have done some digging at Brussels as well. 

I've tried to get 'Striptease' (discussion TV-program) 
interested as well, but I don't know about them.

So lets go off and think hard about good (culture-related) arguments
why this is a bad idea. We'll gonna have to look really nice, and
say some sensible things. :-)

I'm personally attacking the assumption that the police cannot get
to the encrypted traffic without key escrow. Well, why not bug the
keyboard on the originating machine? Etc etc...

I'm currently planning to start an email list dicussing this issue,
but I need some proper political clearance first. (They should at
least have a say, I guess.)

Another thing that is currently happening in Sweden is that a 
National Identity Card is being proposed by a mjor part of the
swedish industry and other players. This ID-card will be a smart 
card, and is meant to be used in most places.

| The only thing that has come up on a public
| (television) level is demands from the police of access to
| decoded GSM traffic, which I believe is under implementation
| now (the obstacle has mainly been who is going to pay for the
| software updates of the GSM nodes). Sweden has rather strict
| rules for wiretapping (at least officially) and their is no
| public pressure for any change in this.

What strikes me as so strange is that we have an official phonetapping
approval rate of 300/yr, in a population of 8 million people.
How can the phone tapping be so important then?

| I think the basic difference USA vs Sweden in this regard is a
| time delay of some years. We have lots of Internet nodes per
| capita (more than in the US, they say) but the net is still
| largly run by engineers (if only that could last!) and net
| awareness is rare above the age of 30 (i.e. among those who
| have a say).

I think things are moving faster in this area than we might think.
There is certainly things happening at the EU level, according
to the Ny Teknik reporter I spoke with. There is a resolution at
the Council of Ministers, already taken during 1994, apparantely.
He was vague about the contents of that resolution, however.

| PS
| Perry, what was your impression of the Swedes you met at the
| IETF meeting in Stockholm last July? I guess they were so
| happy about the new 34 Mbit/s connection to the New World
| that they forgot about the rest?

I'm listening, I'm listening... :-)