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IP: The Second Great Net Panic grips Washington, DC
From: Dave Farber <farber () central cis upenn edu>
Date: Tue, 18 Jun 1996 10:04:11 -0400
Fight-Censorship Dispatch #13 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Second Great Net Panic ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- By Declan McCullagh / declan () well com / Redistribute freely ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- June 9, 1996 WASHINGTON, DC -- As a wet spring steams into a muggy summer, the Second Great Net Panic has gripped the nation's capital. It could be the humidity. The same waterlogged air that makes my keyboard stick about this time every year forces lobbyists and legislators indoors to catered receptions and air-conditioned hearing rooms where they catalog the dangers of the Net. Or perhaps election year politics lends this scaremongering rhetoric its rough, serrated edge. Whatever the cause, it's clear that last year's cyberporn scare -- centering around online smut and leading to the passage of the Communications Decency Act -- is dwarfed by this year's fevered attempts to control the Net. That is, you ain't seen nothin' yet. In the last two weeks: * The Federal Trade Commission held two days of hearings to decide how to regulate web sites that collect personal information about children. * Sen. Sam Nunn (D-GA) announced at a Senate investigations subcommittee hearing that his suspicions of evil cryptohackers lurking on the Net mean the CIA and NSA must be permitted to snoop domestically, a practice long prohibited by law. * The Clinton administration responded to Congressional attempts to liberalize export controls on strong encryption with a "Clipper III" white paper, and a blue-ribbon NRC report recommended only minor changes in U.S. crypto export policy. * The Senate Judiciary Committee held hearings where witnesses from the Hollywood copyright lobby testified that copyright thieves plague the Net. * A House Judiciary subcommittee is planning a final markup of HR2441, a terribly restrictive online copyright bill similar to one the Senate is considering, this Wednesday. * The Defense Information Systems Agency released a report claiming that hackers tried to break into Pentagon systems 250,000 times in 1995. * The 1997 Defense Authorization Bill will give the White House six months to report on "the national policy on protecting the national information infrastructure from strategic attack." * At the first-ever "CyberCongress" hearing held by a House committee, representatives complained about being flamed through anonymous remailers and said there should be accountability online. * Today's Sunday Washington Post featured an article by Richard Leiby on the first page of the Outlook section bashing "self-indulgent dross" and "crap" on the Net: "I took out the Internet trash and found there wasn't much left." * Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT), chair of Senate Judiciary, held a hearing on June 4 where family values activists testified in support of Hatch's bill that gives you 15 years for creating or viewing a GIF that "appears to be" or is said to be kiddie porn -- even if it's actually a morphed photo of an adult. * Journalist Lew Koch unearthed an alarmist speech by Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick slamming not just nonescrowed crypto but the "social problems" of the Net -- and calling for a new "Manhattan Project" and even a new Federal agency to start "devising and implementing solutions." That's the bad news, and the good news is far from reassuring. Some Congressperns are starting to learn about the Net and the Internet Caucus' membership is growing. The computer industry has begun to become more involved in the legislative process, but they're up against well-entrenched opposition. The EFF's Mike Godwin had it right when he wrote to me earlier today: "Every agency wants a bite of jurisdiction over the Internet." I'm not placing any bets on the eventual outcome of the Second Great Net Panic, especially when protect-our-children rhetoric comes laced with protect-our-country slogans. But I know the summer's starting and some of the keys on my workstation are starting to stick. Yesterday I spent a sweaty afternoon performing open-keyboard surgery to try and get my home row working again. So I'm not too optimistic... -=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+ DEPUTY ATTY GENERAL SLAMS NET, CALLS FOR CENTRAL CONTROL +-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+ It's scaremongering at its finest. That's all I can think after I read the text of a speech Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick gave earlier this year at the Air Force Academy. Gorelick starts with the time-honored horror gambit of terrorists, child pornographers, organized crime groups, and hackers -- but then moves on to rail against the social problems she's found on the Net. "Email flames" and "faceless" chat rooms are threats to family values, she claims. Then she calls for a centralized government agency to deal with the problem of the Internet. Clearly, she says, we need a "Manhattan Project" to fight cybernastiness and net.terrorists: We clearly need one focal point in the government to take the lead in addressing this issue comprehensively -- to develop national policy, coordinate the necessary other agencies, and with industry on developing solutions. We need the equivalent of the "Manhattan Project" to address the technological issues and to help us harden our infrastructures against attack. It might be that we can just designate an existing agency to take the lead. Or we may need a new agency or some interagency body to perform the task... Jeanne Devoto (jdevoto () well com) writes: [It's an] attempt to conflate the threat of computer intrusion with the "threat" of open access to a mass medium. If such a conflation is widely successful, we could see "We must pass this measure to license Internet users/ban indecent language/impose FCC regulation on ISPs - in order to combat the threat of computer crime!" Computers are the equivalent of nuclear weapons? Maybe treating software as a munition makes sense after all.
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- IP: The Second Great Net Panic grips Washington, DC Dave Farber (Jun 18)