As reported by ZDNet, US Senator Judd Gregg has proposed tighter restrictions on the use of encryption software, which scrambles electronic data and hinders its detection, and has called for international support. Reports since the Septermber 11 terrorist attacks say that the FBI believe such tools were used to orchestrate the event.
Civil liberties group, Electronic Frontiers Australia said it would be opposed to any move by the Australian Federal Government to follow suit.
"That kind of proposal raises all kinds of questions about commercial confidentiality," EFA's Greg Taylor told ZDNet Australia. Taylor pointed out that encryption techniques are used by a lot of legitimate commercial businesses and that a crackdown would be -totally ineffective" and a "futile gesture" in preventing terrorism.
"Encryption is already out there, all this will affect are commercial organisations and individuals in the future who want to comply with the law. Terrorists don't comply with the law," Taylor said.
"It's pointless to propose this kind of system, it will have no effect on the people who want to secretly communicate for evil purposes," he added.
According to EFA, the US spends US$30 billion per annum on intelligence services, -expenditure which proved to be utterly ineffective in dealing with the terrorism menace". With the solution now to be to spend even more money on surveillance activities, -one is obliged to question whether this expenditure is misdirected," the EFA said.
As the EFA points out, it is as yet unproven that the Internet and encryption technology were used to facilitate last week's terrorist attack.
Senator Gregg suggests that encryption developers be -obliged" to provide decryption tools to government officials, but Network Associates, senior marketing manager Allan Bell believes that this would be a bad move for the Australian government to enforce.
-The problem with that is if those [decryption] tools are available, what's to stop them being used in the wrong place?" And as far as medical and financial online information goes, -do you really want the government to have free access to this information without knowing what restricts their access?"
As Bell points out, there are those people who want to secure their data for legitimate reasons: "You're not going to be able to put the encryption genie back in the box."
Bell doesn't believe that putting restrictions on encryption will help the US government -achieve what it wants to achieve", saying that it may solve the 1 percent problem, but will restrict the 99 percent of legitimate encryption users.
"It's not going to restrict the bad guys," he said.
The EFA agrees saying that these proposals will only impact honest citizens, not terrorists. -As the old saying goes, 'Outlaw crytpography and only outlaws will have it'," the EFA said.
This is all a joke! There is no freedom in America anyway. If you are poor or even middle class, you have no justice in a legal system designed to take care of the rich, and is geared simply to make money, and make more money. They kill people here on the slightest evidence. They deny the right of appeal to the condemned after one year. They try and sentence a person to a year in jail for making a joke about sending 'Tom Cruise Missiles' in a scientologist chat room (thank God for political asylum in Canada). They arrest a Russan who demonstrated a weakness in Adobe PDF software.Rights? There are none. Police would rather shoot first and ask questions later. If you are black then they shoot and ask no questions later. Freedom? When NBC World News runs a feature story on an automated cat litter machine, you know why americans wonder why they are the target of attacks. There is no news. As such, there is no freedom...just the promotion of ignorance, which is the real enemy. And Australia, with it's best journalists long since silenced, is heading the same way- off down the Bulli pass wih no lights and no brakes. And both countries pretend to support freedom in their own, whilst denying it to the rest of the world? But they do pat each other on the back so. And the only free exchanges of information, the internet, they have fought long and hard to control. And they tell us email is responsible for the New York attack? Please. It is just another tactic to employ in their battle to control this freedom of information. Soon the air-heads the media now calls journalists, will be able to give us our news on the web as well. Can't wait for that one. Government in Australia, like America, is just a corporate regional office. The web could soon be the giant shopping mall they want it to be.