[e-privacy] (fwd) New effort to ban encryption

[Anonymous]

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Subject: New effort to ban encryption
Date: 1 Apr 2003 01:04:23 +0100
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http://us.cnn.com/2003/TECH/biztech/03/31/encryption.battle.ap/i
ndex.html

NEW YORK (AP) -- Cheating on income taxes or neglecting to pay 
sales taxes on online shopping could get you five extra years in 
prison if the government succeeds in restricting data-scrambling 
technology, encryption-rights advocates fear.

Such a measure, they worry, might also discourage human rights 
workers in, say, Sri Lanka from encrypting the names and 
addresses of their confidants, in case they fall into the wrong 
hands.

Draft legislation circulating in the Justice Department would 
extend prison sentences for scrambling data in the commission of 
a crime, something encryption advocates fear would achieve 
little in catching terrorists -- and only hurt legitimate uses 
of cryptography.

"Why should the fact that you use encryption have anything to do 
with how guilty you are and what the punishment should be?" asks 
Stanton McCandlish of the CryptoRights Foundation, which teaches 
human rights workers to use encryption. "Should we have enhanced 
penalties because someone wore an overcoat?"



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