Commerce Sec. Hearings and Encryption

I have been watching the confirmation hearings for William Daley,
and I was amazed at the number of references in the questioning
to encryption. I have been watching confirmation hearings for a long
time and have never noticed this much attention being placed on such
a (formerly?) obscure topic.

It appears that encryption is definitely a big blip on the
governmental radar screen now, although whether this is a good
thing or a bad thing is definitely a debatable question. It's
interesting to me that all this interest is coming up in a
confirmation hearing for a *commerce* secretary. Maybe the
commercial aspects of encryption can have a positive impact
on the current restrictions; privacy rights certainly haven't had
any impact.

=Bill=