16 July 1999
Source:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-07/16/071l-071699-idx.html
By Vernon Loeb
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, July 16, 1999; Page A21
The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence weighed in on major encryption legislation yesterday, unanimously adopting amendments to control exports of encryption software and ensure various forms of government access to encrypted data.
"The fact is that America and the American high-tech industry are the 800-pound gorillas in the global marketplace," Chairman Porter J. Goss (R-Fla.) said after the vote. "We have an obligation to use that leverage and that dominance to make sure that the world's terrorists, drug dealers, weapons merchants and child pornographers can be stopped in their tracks."
Goss's committee was the fourth House panel to mark up the measure, approving an amendment sought by FBI Director Louis J. Freeh to ensure that law enforcement agencies can obtain court orders to gain access to encrypted information.
The committee also approved a provision authorizing the president to control--and deny--encryption exports on national security grounds. And it adopted language authorizing funding to improve the capabilities of law enforcement and intelligence agencies in countering the spread of increasingly powerful encryption software.
All of those provisions are considerably more restrictive than versions of the bill marked up by the Commerce, International Relations and Judiciary committees.
With software companies arguing that export controls are costing them market share and privacy activists opposing law enforcement access to encrypted data, Goss said his committee's vote made clear that "we are not about to subjugate our national security or the safety of the American people to the constantly changing whims of the marketplace."