McCain Talks Crypto

This guy needs to connect to a clue server soon before it is too late...


http://www.wired.com/news/politics/story/4588.html           

           McCain Talks Crypto
           by Todd Lappin 

           6:04pm  20.Jun.97.PDT Just got off the phone with Senator
           John McCain. 

           It has been a big week for the Republican from
           Arizona. On Monday, he and Senator Bob Kerrey
           (D-Nebraska) dropped a bomb on the encryption
           debate. They introduced S909, the Secure Public
           Networks Act, a bill that would write into law most of
           the Clinton administration's encryption policy -
           leviathan key recovery system, continued restraints
           on exporting strong encryption, the whole bit. Then,
           leveraging his chairmanship of the Senate
           Commerce Committee, he pushed the bill onto a
           legislative fast track. Despite the fact that his bill cuts
           the legs from under Pro-CODE - a bill by Montana
           Republican Conrad Burns that would scrap the
           export controls - McCain said he's eager to negotiate
           on the issues. 

           Here are the highlights of our 5-minute conversation
           - during which a certain two-word term was repeated
           again and again. Let's see if you can spot it. 

           On the rationale behind S909:
           "I've always said that national security is a primary
           concern - and based on my own experience [nearly
           six years as a Vietnam POW], I've had a lot of time to
           consider how important that really is." 

           On the software industry:
           "Frankly, I'm somewhat surprised that the software
           industry would be so willing to downplay the dangers
           of child porn.... This stuff is out there, and we can't
           allow child pornographers to hide by encrypting that
           material." 

           "... I'm astonished that any industry would consider
           their priorities to be so important that they override
           national security concerns." 

           On the rival Pro-CODE bill:
           "I'm all for Pro-CODE - except for its impact on
           national security. 

           On the future:
           "I promise you, now that we've adopted this
           legislation, we will sit down and work this out with all
           the parties involved. As I've said before, from a
           practical standpoint, we can't override a presidential
           veto. With this bill, we've established that the
           president of the United States has authority over
           national security."

At 08:42 PM 6/21/97 -0700, Alan Olsen wrote:
>This guy needs to connect to a clue server soon before it is too late...

>http://www.wired.com/news/politics/story/4588.html           
>           McCain Talks Crypto          by Todd Lappin 
>
>           6:04pm  20.Jun.97.PDT Just got off the phone with Senator
>           John McCain. 
>...  Despite the fact that his bill cuts
>           the legs from under Pro-CODE - a bill by Montana
>           Republican Conrad Burns that would scrap the
>           export controls - McCain said he's eager to negotiate
>           on the issues. 
>
>           Here are the highlights of our 5-minute conversation
>           - during which a certain two-word term was repeated
>           again and again. Let's see if you can spot it. 
>
>           On the rationale behind S909:
>           "I've always said that national security is a primary
>           concern - and based on my own experience [nearly
>           six years as a Vietnam POW], I've had a lot of time to
>           consider how important that really is." 
>           "... I'm astonished that any industry would consider
>           their priorities to be so important that they override
>           national security concerns." 
>
>           On the rival Pro-CODE bill:
>           "I'm all for Pro-CODE - except for its impact on
>           national security. 
>
>           On the future:
>           "I promise you, now that we've adopted this
>           legislation, we will sit down and work this out with all
>           the parties involved. As I've said before, from a

Sigh.  Make the laws and then work out the details -- I don't think so :-)

However, if his real concern IS national security, then perhaps
he can be reached - not only is our real national security based on
the economy, but any vaguely competent foreign government or
major terrorist organization has access to all the crypto they need:
unlike fully assembled missiles and plutonium, which are hard to get and
hard to smuggle across borders, crypto is easy to buy anywhere in the US,
and the Enemies Of The State just have to take one copy out, by laptop,
by floppy disk, by modem, or by satellite, and you've lost control.

I assume he knows he's using the child pornography excuse as a 
cynical play to the media - the obvious response is that 
	McCain's Pro-Forgery Bill
by making good crypto tools less available, and by making sure
that people will choose to get their important digital certificates
from multiple CAs and non-US-controlled CAs, or just go uncertified,
will make it forgery more common and digital signatures less trusted.
So <wave hands wildly here> your kids are more likely to have fake IDs
like we did to drink when we were younger and <wave hands again>
that'll lead to more pornography on the net, imported from foreign
countries that have lower standards than our fine American communities, and...


#			Thanks;  Bill
# Bill Stewart, +1-415-442-2215 stewarts@ix.netcom.com
# You can get PGP outside the US at ftp.ox.ac.uk/pub/crypto/pgp
#   (If this is a mailing list or news, please Cc: me on replies.  Thanks.)