E-mail snooping will create police state, guru warns

[William Knowles <wk () C4I ORG>]

http://www.the-times.co.uk/news/pages/tim/2000/07/06/timpolpol02005.html

July 6th 2000

BY MELISSA KITE, POLITICAL REPORTER

THE world's leading Internet watchdog warned Tony Blair yesterday that
his plans to give police powers to intercept private e-mails would
turn Britain into a police state.

Esther Dyson, who advises President Clinton and heads an international
agency charged with setting policy for the Internet, urged ministers
to abandon the Regula tion of Investigatory Powers Bill.

The American businesswoman said the legislation was tantamount to
passing a law forcing people to keep their living room curtains open.
She told The Times at an Anglo-American enterprise conference in
London attended by Gordon Brown, John Prescott, and Stephen Byers:
"The UK is not uniquely clueless on this. This is what governments do,
they control things.

"But the Government needs to have the courage and the faith to leave
people alone."

Ms Dyson, who is chairman of the venture capitalist group EDventure
Holdings, said: "You don't want a police state. Crime is crime, but
that doesn't mean you can have a law making everyone keep their
curtains up to help the police."

The former Wall Street analyst said she was relieved that the Bill had
run into opposition in the House of Lords. Ministers last week rushed
out a series of amendments that water down some of the proposals after
Liberal Democrat and Tory peers threatened to throw out the Bill.

Concessions including tighter definitions of the information police
can obtain without a warrant from the Home Secretary, and when they
can demand the handover of decryption keys to allow the deciphering of
encoded internet files.

But the Government shows no sign of backing down from the main
proposals which will give the security forces access to e-mails. All
companies that provide Internet services would be forced to install
expensive "black boxes" that would allow the security forces to
monitor e-mail traffic.

Minister say the Bill will help the police and MI5 to combat organised
crime and terrorism but a powerful alliance of civil liberties groups,
Internet companies and peers have protested that it would impose
unfair costs on industry and risk abuse of privacy rights. MPs who
believe the Bill contravenes the European Convention on Human Rights
are threatening to mount a further rebellion when it returns to the
Commons.

Regarded in the US as the doyenne of cyberspace, Ms Dyson is chairman
of Icann, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers,
which sets policy for the Net's core infrastructure. She is listed by
Fortune Magazine as one of America's 50 most powerful women.

Ms Dyson also dismissed claims that US businesses were worried about
Britain joining the euro. She believed that Americans regarded it as
inevitable that Britain would join eventually.

"Americans take it for granted. American business is going to say 'the
simpler you make it the better'.

"Fundamentally it is more efficient, so long as it is on the right
terms. So, on balance, go ahead and do the euro. It is cute to have
the British pound, it is quaint. But Britain has more hope if it joins
them and fights for what it wants: don't stand on the sidelines."


*-------------------------------------------------*
"Communications without intelligence is noise;
Intelligence without communications is irrelevant."
Gen. Alfred. M. Gray, USMC
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