The cyberspace liberation front

...Under ordinary encryption, the single combination "key" can be closely held by the owner...

...Goodlatte makes the same point: "Criminals are not going to participate" in any safeguards mandated by law, any more than they obey the gun laws...

...Burns aims to keep the Internal Revenue Service out of his constituents' computers...

...The front is pushing legislation that would bar the government from regulating the hugely powerful encryption software now under development...

...McCain's goal is to keep the government's options open as it oversees the creation of the information-age economy, says an aide, adding, "You have to be prepared to deal with issues you don't know" and can't foresee, such as novel forms of organized crime and the impact of digital money on the banking system and the dollar...

...And it will be poised to blame its political opponents for any future terrorist attacks aided by encryption...

...protect your privacy...

...White House cyberspace adviser Ira Magaziner shares this vision...

...exports of miscellaneous business and consumer software...

...Both of the traditional parties are going to have to come to grips with this...

...People have a lot more power on the Internet than in the real world," says Johnson, because in cyberspace they can directly influence politics and business in choosing how to spend their time and money...

...He seemed confident it could be worked out...

...Ellison, whose $7 billion software fortune is second only to Bill Gates's, spent the morning of May 21 in Washington, D.C., talking to intelligence and law-enforcement officials about the encryption problem...

...Neil Munro is a reporter for Washington Technology, a business newspaper published by the Washington Post Company...

...If government thus divests itself of many regulatory functions, education will be its chief remaining instrument for promoting equality in the new economy, Magaziner says...

...courts may yet declare encryption software protected by the First Amendment...

...It is the ultimate Big Brother issue...

...Goodlatte's closest Democratic ally in the House is Silicon Valley's Zoe Lofgren, whose goal is to "give women more freedom and choice...

...Just as banks have long helped police trace criminals' money trails, the key-management industry could help them uncover criminals' cyberspace dealings with legitimate banks and businesses...

...Let private industry make shoes, and let the government keep the peace...

...It will fall to Republican John McCain, chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee and a likely presidential candidate, to midwife a compromise between the Kerrey bill, favored by the administration, and the Burns and Goodlatte bills favored by the Cyberspace Liberation Front...

...surveillance of foreign arms merchants and armies...

...If the government knows X about you, it will tax X," he says...

...Encryption technology is advancing rapidly in the United States and overseas...

...In the other corner, free-speech advocates huddle with free-marketeers—the Free Love and No Free Lunch lobbies...

...Here's a simple example...

...In any deal, McCain will have to bring along both poles of the Cyberspace Liberation Front—the likes of Lott and Nickles, on the one hand, with their 1996 American Conservative Union ratings of 95 percent and 100 percent respectively, and on the other, of Ron Wyden, Patrick Leahy, and Barbara Boxer, who score 15 percent, 5 percent, and 5 percent respectively on the ACU scale...

...In the establishment corner, hoping to defeat the legislation and regulate encryption software, are the Clinton White House, Louis Freeh's FBI, the Treasury, and the Pentagon...

...In the House, more than 120 members have lined up behind the similar bill sponsored by Goodlatte and Lofgren (ACU ratings 95 percent and 5 percent...

...Already, the libertarians are aghast at an FBI-backed provision of the Goodlatte bill that would criminalize the use of encryption for criminal purposes...

...What keeps this coalition together is the Internet's power to generate both paranoia and profit and to commingle free-speech and free-market issues...

...The industry standard, currently 40-digit lock combinations, will soon be 128-digit combinations that are as good as uncrackable, even by the superfast lock-picking computers built by the nation's eavesdropping outfit, the National Security Agency...

...This industry would also develop expertise in tracing encrypted transactions through diverse computer systems...

...I suppose the princes of commerce, the merchant princes, would like to get rid of the princes of government," he said, "but it is not going to happen...

...The Right does not genuflect at the power of the state anymore...

...In addition, the technology can be used to sign contracts with unique electronic signatures, mint unforgeable digital cash, armor the nation's power grid and telephone network against destructive attacks by foreign computer hackers in wartime, shield cellular phone conversations, and verify the identity of any user of the Internet worldwide...

...Large corporations are eager to promote Internet commerce...

...To this end, the White House is seeking to encourage the development and use of so-called key-recovery software...

...The technology can indeed be used to evade taxes, give criminals sanctuary from police, produce currencies that rival the dollar, anonymously rent Ryder trucks, put perverts in touch with one another worldwide to swap child pornography, link terrorists in hidden communications networks, and generally undermine laws and social conventions...

...workers and companies...

...It can also steer government contracts to companies that market government-favored encryption technology...

...Phyllis Schlafly, meanwhile, says she wants to stop Al Gore, Janet Reno, and Freeh from imposing a police state, while Sen...

...Larry Ellison, founder of the world's second largest software developer, Oracle Corp., says his company "is inclined to work closely with the intelligence community and the government to find a sane solution to this problem...

...Encryption software with the key-recovery feature would automatically create a second key, which might be held in escrow by the maker or by a new "key-management industry," so boosting the FBI's chances of finding a copy of the key once a judge has approved a court order...

...Gambling is illegal or restricted in most states, to prevent Pop from squandering little Julia's community-college tuition on craps...

...For the time being, the use of encryption is still unrestricted inside the United States, and both sides in the controversy acknowledge that little harm is being done...

...The FBI and the Treasury are prodding government agencies and companies to devise a government-backed, privately operated key-management industry that would safely store spare keys for individual and corporate clients...

...Supporters range from Bob Barr to Jerrold Nadler (ACU ratings 100 percent and 0 percent...

...There is a role to be played by both...

...Industrialists such as Netscape's James Barksdale say they are only trying to maintain American preeminence in the information age...

...Amid these pressures, the White House has maintained a reasonably firm policy of simultaneously promoting industry's use of encryption and defending the power of law enforcement...

...Besides, in his view the FBI does not really need to control encryption, partly because increased use of computers will force criminals to leave electronic tracks whenever they deal with legitimate companies, such as airlines, which are usually willing to cooperate with law enforcement...

...software and computer industries and to the development of markets in cyberspace...

...Norquist's director of economic research, James Lucier, puts it this way: "This [issue] is about the government being able to read, monitor, and control everything on the Internet...

...The trouble is, the reverse is also true...

...Grover Norquist sees in cyberspace "an area of the economy that the government hasn't screwed up yet...

...Phyllis Schlafly chimes in: Encryption is needed to prevent "the nosy government from spying on us...

...It is vital for storing money or secrets in cyberspace...

...He is completing a high-profile policy paper for Clinton's approval that recommends that government, in the name of economic efficiency, hand over much regulatory power to industry...

...Although the Cyberspace Liberation Front thinks it can win in the House and Senate, McCain's aide sees little chance that Congress could override a promised presidential veto—especially if Clinton vetoes the bill in front of a telegenic assembly of police chiefs...

...They've all got a point...

...The members of the Cyberspace Liberation Front have various motives...

...They think they are running a totalitarian state...

...They worry that private parties' use of sophisticated data-scrambling software will weaken regulation of banks, allow terrorists and other criminals to plot undetected, and hamper U.S...

...Their efforts have persuaded much of the House and a good part of the Senate to back bills keeping Washington's hands off encryption technology...

...Sponsored by two Republicans, Conrad Burns of Montana in the Senate and Bob Goodlatte of Virginia in the House, the bills have the support of Senate majority leader Trent Lott, majority whip Don Nickles, and House majority whip Tom DeLay...

...Armed with cheap encryption software, ordinary users of desktop PCs can scramble electronic documents and e-mail, thus protecting their intellectual property and personal communications from snoopers, cyber-thieves, and hackers...

...Microsoft is quite willing to sell key-recovery software, provided users are allowed to switch the key-recovery function on and off, says Ira Rubinstein, a senior counsel for Microsoft...

...This marriage of industry with left-wing and right-wing libertarians reflects the Internet's impact on business and politics, argues David Johnson, the Washington-based chairman of Counsel Connect, an Internet network for lawyers...

...Good encryption is essential to the U.S...

...Together, these functions make possible an electronic marketplace of ideas, products, and reputations worth many, many billions of dollars to U.S...

...The American Civil Liberties Union, Grover Norquist's Americans For Tax Reform, Phyllis Schlafly's Eagle Forum, such Internet-boosters as the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and Steve Forbes, editor of Forbes and once-and-future GOP presidential candidate, have joined with two of the largest software companies in the world, Microsoft and Netscape Communications...

...If the government would just agree not to mandate the use of key-recovery technology, industry would see its sales of software rise, and more criminals would actually end up using it, he argues...

...It pits government—specifically, law enforcement—against a disorienting jumble of right-wing and left-wing legislators, interest groups, and business leaders to be known herein as the Cyberspace Liberation Front...

...But Internet gambling will allow Pop to blow all his family's savings in an afternoon in the privacy of his living room—and the cops won't be able to do anything about it because Pop can use encryption to hide his bets at a cyberspace casino based in some semi-criminal overseas state...

...Don Haines, the ACLU's legislative counsel for cyberspace and privacy, is equally skeptical of government, arguing that "the FBI itself cannot be trusted...

...The development of key-recovery software and a key-management "infrastructure" is the goal of draft legislation that Democratic senator Bob Kerrey, flanked by minority leader Tom Daschle, announced in May...

...The Cold War is over," he says...

...In reality, there isn't much Congress can do to prevent these unfortunate side effects...

...So don't let it know...

...The administration's goal is to protect investigators' interest, in the event of a court-ordered wiretap or search warrant, in gaining access to encrypted material...

...The White House has at hand several means of persuasion...

...Concern for privacy is what unites her liberal friends with what she calls the "Black Helicopter caucus," the militia types who fear a United Nations invasion of the United States...

...For example, the information-technology industry should establish rules for the protection of personal privacy in cyberspace, and it should create software allowing parents to screen out distasteful content such as pornography...

...But in the short term, the libertarian parties to this union will likely get dumped outside the church door if big business and government can make a deal...

...And cops say they are beginning to find criminals using encryption to hide their cellphone conversations, financial records, and libraries of child porn...

...Government intervention will cripple the U.S...

...Over time, the Internet will realign politics and force the government to cede more regulatory tasks to companies and communities of people linked via the Internet...

...It is using complicated trade rules to hold up exports by uncooperative companies and facilitate exports by cooperative ones...

...Industry executives claim, however, that foreign companies will use their own growing expertise in encryption to cut into U.S...

...Moreover, U.S...

...An international policy on encryption is hard to envision, given governments' varying levels of interest in respecting their citizens' privacy...

...These themes come up again and again in the comments of front backers...

...computer industry without thwarting criminals, he says...

...Encryption can be thought of as a combination lock that shields computerized data and transactions from hackers and eavesdroppers—but also from legitimate investigators...

...Given the chance, he predicts, government will do its usual mischief...