U.S. To Follow EU Crypto Lead

[William Knowles <wk () C4I ORG>]

http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,36788,00.html

by Declan McCullagh
3:00 a.m. Jun. 6, 2000 PDT

WASHINGTON -- If the European Union votes next week to relax
encryption regulations, the United States says it will take similar
steps.

Commerce Department Undersecretary William Reinsch said Monday that
any change, designed to make sure American high-tech companies aren't
disadvantaged, will have to wait until the Europeans reach a decision.

"In order to make the best move, we must wait until after the EU makes
theirs on June 13th. An announcement will come, must come after the
EU's announcement," Reinsch told the annual meeting of the Computer
and Communications Industry Association in Washington.

The European Ministers of Foreign Affairs is expected to vote on June
13 to dramatically relax export controls. The panel last month delayed
a scheduled vote on the proposal, citing too many items on the
meeting's agenda.

American businesses have complained, individually and through lobby
groups like Americans for Computer Privacy, that being subject to more
restrictive regulations than their competitors places U.S. firms at a
competitive disadvantage.

Industry executives, including Microsoft CEO Bill Gates, will trek to
Washington on Wednesday for an annual lobbying session that includes a
focus on encryption. Some firms, like Hushmail and Zero Knowledge
Systems, have lured American cryptographers abroad.

The expected change in encryption regulations would make it
dramatically easier for European countries to export encryption
technologies, used in network security and privacy-protecting hardware
and software.

Reinsch said that any change in U.S. regulations, which can be done
without congressional action, should address cryptographic interfaces
to existing programs.

He has said recently that the United States is not obliged to be as
liberal as European governments when it comes to crypto-relaxation.

Other speakers at the CCIA event included Orson Swindle, a
commissioner at the Federal Trade Commission.

Swindle, a free-market voice at the FTC, said industry should be
encouraged to handle its own privacy problems.

If websites draft their own privacy policies, that increases
competition for users, and federal legislation "may actually reduce
the level of choice of privacy policies available to the consumer,"
Swindle said.


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