Path: utzoo!telecom-request Date: Thu, 9 May 91 12:45:52 GMT From: Andy Oakland Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Re: You're All A Bunch of Terrorists Message-ID: Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Sender: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu Approved: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 11, Issue 349, Message 3 of 10 Lines: 34 In article mitel!Software!grayt@uunet. uu.net (Tom Gray) writes: > In article phil@wubios.wustl.edu (J. > Philip Miller) writes: >> It is the sense of Congress that providers of electronic >> communications services and manufacturers of electronic communications >> service equipment shall ensure that communications systems permit the >> government to obtain the plain text contents of voice, data, and other >> communications when appropriately authorized by law. > All this really states is that the government should have the right to > wire tap if it gets a search warrant. I don't see anything draconian > about this. > You may also note that this text does NOT specicifically refer to >encryption. Actually, this "sense of Congress" resolution has been causing us here at MIT Project Athena great distress, because it effectively bans certain types of encryption. We're working on "privacy enhanced email," which is email guaranteed to be unreadable by anyone except the person to whom it was directed. Thanks to public and private key encryption, even the system operator can't read these messages. But since the resolution demands that the "plain text" of all messages must be available to the government, this privacy enhanced mail effectively becomes illegal! Andy Oakland Project Athena Advanced Development Group sao@athena.mit.edu