IP: New Encryption Rules Leave Civil Libertarians Unhappy

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

New Encryption Rules Leave Civil Libertarians Unhappy

By JERI CLAUSING

WASHINGTON -- Before the Clinton administration last week unveiled its
long-awaited plan for deregulating encryption technology, the Commerce
Department's point man on the issue said he was sure of one thing: the
changes would never please everyone.

He was right.

While most high-tech companies are applauding the new encryption regulations
as delivering on Vice President Al Gore's promises to eliminate cumbersome
licensing rules on exporting software, civil libertarians say they fail to
fix the constitutional questions at the heart of pending court cases.

The American Civil Liberties Union, the Electronic Privacy Information
Center and the Electronic Frontier Foundation say the new rules still raise
free-speech questions for researchers who want to publish their source
code -- the lines of instructions programmers write -- on the Internet. And
they are vowing to continue pushing their assertion that the regulations
make encryption software and technology more cumbersome to publish or send
on the Internet than for the same items published in other media.

<snip>

http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/00/01/cyber/capital/18capital.html