Reading this Chicago Tribune article, I was pleased to see a quote from Bruce Schneier, but the article glossed over what seems to me to be the most important issue.
While Mr Salkowski discusses the implications of Congress putting further restrictions on encryption technology, the article completely glosses over the question of whether it is constitutionally possible for Congress to put restrictions on the domestic use of cryptography.
Date: Monday, January 29, 2001
Section: Business
Page: 2
Source: By Joe Salkowski, Tribune Media Services.
"Instead of building a defensive wall, we're planting a huge stake in the ground and hoping the attacker will only take the path that runs into the stake," wrote Bruce Schneier, a well-respected crypto guru who runs Counterpane Internet Security Inc. "A smart attacker will simply go around the stake."
Such vulnerabilities are actually beneficial for those who would make legitimate use of encryption. As long as police have a shot at working around a criminal's use of strong data-scrambling technology, there's no reason to stop the rest of us from using it to sign online contracts, send secure messages and store critical files out of a hacker's reach.
Privacy advocates complain that the key-tracing device installed on Scarfo's computer is too invasive. His defense attorney also is expected to argue that current laws don't authorize such methods. It's possible they'll succeed, as the judge who authorized the device relied on laws designed for listening devices. In the long run, though, it would make sense for Congress or the courts to make sure police have the power to install encryption workarounds in circumstances similar to those that authorize traditional "bugs."
The process is invasive, to be sure, but there's no particular reason our computer files should be considered more sacrosanct than our spoken words. Besides, it's a reasonable price to avoid further restrictions on a technology that is becoming more useful every day.
We should all have the right to keep our secrets safe, even on the Net. And unless we give police a reasonable chance to sniff out a few of them, Congress may feel compelled to leave us with none at all.
