WASHINGTON, D.C., U.S.A., 1995 MAY 2 (NB) -- The Federal Bureau of Investigation is using the Oklahoma City bombing as an example of why the nation needs controls on private encryption. Civil libertarians are countering that the FBI wants to subvert the free speech clause of the US Constitution.
In testimony last week to the Senate Judiciary Committee, FBI Director Louis Freeh expressed concern about the ability of terrorist group members to communicate on the Internet, using encryption technology such as Pretty Good Privacy (PGP).
"Encryption capabilities available to criminals and terrorists endanger the future usefulness of court-authorized wiretaps," Freeh told the committee. "This problem must be resolved." Freeh also said the FBI needs increased access to "common carrier records," meaning telephone and telecommunications service carriers, "for counterterrorism and counterintelligence investigations."
Freeh appeared to win a convert in Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), ranking minority member of the committee and usually considered a strong free speech defender.
Kennedy held up what he called a "how to manual for the terrorist" that a staff member had downloaded from the Internet, and said, "We know the advantage of the information highway, but there's the darker side, too, we need to be concerned about."
Noting that the Senate Commerce Committee has included a ban on pornography on the Internet in the pending telecommunications legislation, Kennedy said, "We ought to stop terrorism, too."
Later, a spokesman for the Massachusetts liberal said he was only seeking to raise the issue for debate and remains committed to the First Amendment.
But civil libertarians remain concerned that in the charged atmosphere of the aftermath of Oklahoma City, Congress could try to impose limits on the anarchic and free-spirited Internet. "In these times," wrote Denise Caruso, a member of the board of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, in the New York Times, "it is easy to demonize the big, powerful, invisible Internet -- to be outraged that it harbors pornographers and hackers and hate groups, and demand a means to monitor and control their conversations on the network so they might be stopped."
Noting that most of the militia field manuals are available legally in survivalist bookstores, Caruso quoted Benjamin Franklin: "They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
The Times editorialized, "Government is right to worry about keeping pace with electronic criminals. But citizens should not generally be forced to surrender privacy just to make law enforcement easier."
(Kennedy Maize/19950502/Press Contacts: FBI press office, 202-324-3691; Drew Taubman, EFF, 202-861-7700)
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Copyright (c) 1995 Newsbytes News Network
Received by NewsEDGE/LAN: 5/2/95 12:34 PM
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