For years, the control freaks who dominate federal law enforcement and "defense" policy have imposed sharp restrictions on American software firms wishing to "export" encryption technology -- the formulas which allow Internet users to encode their electronic messages.
Such technology could be used by terrorists or drug-runners to hide their doings from the FBI, government agents have squealed as they rushed to stick their fingers in the dike. Therefore, American high-tech firms have been required to apply for a special "munitions export license" each time such technology -- or computers containing such software -- are shipped overseas.
But the effort proved completely futile. The encryption codes n question are, in fact, mathematical formulas. How is one to keep a mathematical formula secret, in an age when a high-school kid in Iowa can ship it to multiple, unknown recipients around the globe without leaving his bedroom, simply by pushing the "send" key?
In fact, hostile foreign states, terrorists, and drug runners are already acquiring encryption systems. They're simply buying them from providers outside the United States.
The end result? "A slow, grinding disappearance of the U.S.crypto industry," explains Stewart Baker, who once served as general counsel to the National Security Agency, but now represents private, high-tech firms. "In the end, I think everybody realized that."
What a prospect -- the foreigners we were attempting to embargo getting free access to the stuff (folks are demanding such security safeguards just to use their credit cards over the Internet, after all), while the American firms were left to wither on the vine, leaving this country to inevitably fall behind in a technology which we pioneered!
(Let's not get into machine gun development, another field once dominated by amateur Americans working in home workshops, but an undertaking now effectively outlawed for any private American -- the price to be paid in the next big war, which we'll enter with largely 1940s technology.)
Finally last Thursday the Clinton administration caved in, eliminating the requirement for individual "munitions export licenses" (though crypto manufacturers will still have to apply for a one-time certification of their products.) The administration even abandoned -- at least officially -- its attempt to require American manufacturers to design secret "back doors" into their programs, through which the FBI could have disabled secrecy codes and secretly searched remote computer files.
(After all, who would pay for a "secrecy" product like that? It would be like buying an imported padlock after learning that extra numbered keys had been provided to representatives of the Gestapo, te Stasi, the Red Guard, France's Deuxieme Bureau ...)
Defense Secretary John Hamre and Attorney General Janet Reno tried to put the best face on the official turnabout Thursday, Ms. Reno insisting that "Law enforcement maintains its ability to protect public safety." Her previous concerns have been assuaged by the promised introduction of the new Cyberspace Electronic Security Act of 1999, which would provide $80 million over the next four years to establish a new FBI code-cracking unit, she explained.
So they bought her off for $80 million -- which the FBI will now use in an attempt to undo all the sensible decisions in favor of freedom and privacy announced in Washington Thursday. How reassuring. Imagine the Founding Fathers being allowed to initiate the U.S. Post Office only after allocating $80 million for use in developing ways to steam open our letters.
If the FBI had its way, would manufacturers be required to formulate bedroom curtains out of some special material which G-men could peek through when the spirit moves them? Could we buy them off with $80 million for a new "Peeping Tom Unit," do you suppose?
In fact, the Clinton administration deserves no credit at all for bowing to the inevitable with Thursday's attempt at a "least harm" compromise. The Washington Post reports: "The administration's shift may also be attributed to the momentum that has developed for industry-backed legislation that would have gone even further to remove export limits -- a fact noted Thursday by Rep. Robert W. Goodlatte, R-Va., sponsor of the Security and Freedom through Encryption Act (SAFE.)"
Rep. Goodlatte says he's not going to withdraw his bill, since "There have been incidents where the regulations that have been implemented haven't lived up to the billing."
Good for him.
For his part, President Clinton promises to veto the Goodlatte bill if it reaches his desk, describing it as a dangerous rollback of law enforcement authority.
Now, that's more like it -- the old police-state Clinton we know an love.
Vin Suprynowicz is the assistant editorial page editor of the Las Vegas Review-Journal. His new book, "Send in the Waco Killers: Essays on the Freedom Movement, 1993-1998," is available at $21.95 plus $3 shipping through Mountain Media, P.O. Box 271122, Las Vegas, Nev. 89127; through web site http://www.thespiritof76.com/wacokillers.html; or via 1-800-244-2224.
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Vin Suprynowicz, vin@lvrj.com
"The evils of tyranny are rarely seen but by him who resists it." -- John Hay, 1872
"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed -- and thus clamorous to be led to safety -- by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." -- H.L. Mencken
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