you can run software, but ONLY "subject to the needs of law enforcement"

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: you can run software, but ONLY "subject to the needs of law
enforcement"
Date: Wed, 01 Mar 2006 12:37:01 -0800
From: Jim Warren <jwarren () well com>
To: Dave Farber <dave () farber net>
CC: Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>

http://news.com.com/2061-10804_3-5884130.html

FBI to get veto power over PC software?
September 27, 2005 11:37 AM PDT

The Federal Communications Commission thinks you have the right to
use software on your computer only if the FBI approves.

No, really. In an obscure "policy" document released around 9 p.m. ET
last Friday, the FCC announced this remarkable decision.

According to the three-page document, to preserve the openness that
characterizes today's Internet, "consumers are entitled to run
applications and use services of their choice, subject to the needs
of law enforcement." Read the last seven words again.

The FCC didn't offer much in the way of clarification. But the
clearest reading of the pronouncement is that some unelected
bureaucrats at the commission have decreed that Americans don't have
the right to use software such as Skype or PGPfone if it doesn't
support mandatory backdoors for wiretapping. (That interpretation was
confirmed by an FCC spokesman on Monday, who asked not to be
identified by name. Also, the announcement came at the same time as
the FCC posted its wiretapping rules for Internet telephony.)

Nowhere does the commission say how it jibes this official
pronouncement with, say, the First Amendment's right to speak freely,
not to mention the limited powers granted the federal government by
the U.S. Constitution.

What's also worth noting is that the FCC's pronunciamento almost
tracks the language of the 1996 Telecommunications Act. Almost.

But where federal law states that it is the policy of the United
States to preserve a free market for Internet services "unfettered by
federal or state regulation," the bureaucrats have adroitly
interpreted that to mean precisely the opposite of Congress said.
Ain't that clever?

Posted by Declan McCullagh

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