IP: Congress weighs crypto-in-a-crime, wiretapping legislation

[Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>]

> Also see:
> http://cryptome.org/hr46.htm#Senate
> *******
>
> http://www.nationalreview.com/kopel/kopel121500.shtml
>
>    12/15/00 11:10 a.m.
>    End-of-Session Robbery
>    Congress limits civil liberties before going home for the holidays.
>
>    By Dave Kopel of the Independence Institute
>
>    EDITOR'S NOTE: Late on December 15, the sponsors of H.R. 46 agreed to
>    remove all objectionable material from the bill, except for the
>    encryption provision.
>
>    Congress may adjourn today -- but not before inflicting a
>    series of blows on civil liberties and federalism. As is usual for
>    end-of-the-session assaults on civil liberties, the plan is to speed
>    the new laws through as attachments to some innocuous law, before most
>    people in Congress have time to notice. The only real chance for
>    stopping this plan lies in House and Senate leadership (especially the
>    House) being flooded with phone calls objecting to yet another sneak
>    attack on the Bill of Rights.
>
>    At issue is H.R. 46, a seemingly harmless bill titled "Public Safety
>    Medal of Valor." The bill sets up a federal board to award federal
>    Medals of Valor to policemen, federal agents, and the like. But
>    Congress, unlike many state legislatures, does not operate under a
>    constitutional requirement that a bill's subject matter and title be
>    the same. And it turns out that there's much more in this bill than
>    just medals for firefighters. What the bill does is:
>
>      * Expand federal asset forfeiture.
>
>      * Expand wiretapping
>
>      * Provide special additional punishments for people who use
>        encryption.
>
>      * Federalize juvenile crimes, which are properly matters for state
>        governments to address.
>
>    The House committee report on the bill, of course, only discusses
>    medals for police officers -- and not any of the unrelated material
>    which is being added in the closing hours of Congress. The unrelated,
>    dangerous, material comes mostly from the never-passed H.R. 2448.
>
>    These new provisions were added to H.R. 46 on October 24, 2000, by the
>    Senate. (See Congressional Record page 10913).
>
>    [...]



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