Internet World Online, September 1996
http://www.iw.com/current/feature1.html

BIG BROTHER GEARS UP

The U.S. government, using terrorism as an excuse, is seeking a
broad range of controls over the Internet.

By Declan McCullagh (declan@well.com)

   For Federal bureaucrats trying to grab control of cyberspace, the
   Olympic Park bombing and the explosion of TWA flight 800 couldn't have
   happened at a better time. Congress and the White House have used the
   horrific events as convenient pretexts for extending government
   control of cyberspace. They've gone beyond censoring smut to
   restricting encryption, banning bomb-making instructions from the Web,
   and even yanking the Net connections of suspected terrorist countries.
    
   The latest attacks on the Net began at a meeting of the "Group of
   Seven" (G-7) countries in Paris, where Attorney General Janet Reno
   proposed a resolution banning the free use of programs like Pretty
   Good Privacy. The measure, unanimously adopted by the G-7 member
   nations and Russia on July 30, calls for high-level talks between
   countries to work towards "the use of encryption that allows... lawful
   government access to data and communications."

   The White House has also unsuccessfully lobbied for restrictions on
   the domestic use of encryption technologies that the spooks can't
   crack. Don Haines of the ACLU's national legislative office says: "The
   administration thought it had an opening [by] employing a shameful use
   of grief around Atlanta and the TWA disaster. They thought they could
   trade on that and get legislators to sign on."
   
   More recently, the National Science Foundation cut off Iranian
   netizens from the U.S. in response to a new law that tightened
   sanctions on terrorist nations. After a hostile response from Iranian
   expatriates and inquiries from the press, the NSF reversed itself on
   August 28 and lifted the embargo.
                 
   Solveig Bernstein, the assistant director of technology studies at the
   Cato Institute, says that the cutoff of Iran "raises serious First
   Amendment questions."

   "Ever since the 19th century, the U.S. Postal Service has tried to
   leverage its monopoly on the mails into a means of content control.
   The Supreme Court upheld the right to receive information from abroad.
   Now it looks like NSF is trying to leverage its control of the
   Internet infrastructure the same way," Bernstein says.

   On Capitol Hill, Senate Democrats have been the shrillest in crying
   for government censorship and what amounts to clear invasions of
   privacy -- in the name of "anti-terrorism" or "protecting the
   children."

   Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) scored political points by railing
   against terrorists and introducing legislation making it a criminal         
   offense to distribute bomb-making instructions in print or via the
   Net. (After the July bombings, the Senate quickly passed the Feinstein
   Amendment and the House will consider it next month.)

   Eugene Volokh, a law professor at UCLA, questions the measure's  
   constitutionality. "The problem is it's hard to write this. In a      
   nutshell, conveying information about how to commit a crime shouldn't
   be made criminal," Volokh says. "At a certain point everyone agrees it
   must be criminal but nobody knows where to draw the line."  
   
   Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) demonstrated that he's only occasionally an 
   ally of the Net. A staunch opponent of the Communications Decency Act
   and crypto restrictions, Leahy nevertheless shepherded an invasive
   wiretap bill through the last Congress and now is determined to allow
   the NSA and CIA to fund the program without public oversight. "I was
   proud to have worked with the FBI director to ensure passage of the
   Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, sometimes called
   the digital telephony law... I will continue to urge my colleagues to
   fund fully the digital telephony law," Leahy said. (The House approved
   Digital Telephony funding on July 25, although the Senate has not yet
   voted.)

   In the House, Republicans outmaneuvered their Democratic colleagues
   and passed a surprisingly reasonable anti-terrorism bill on August 2. 
   Deleted from the legislation were many of the unconstitutional        
   provisions the Democrats had demanded: broader wiretap authority for 
   the Feds, warrantless short-term wiretaps, a framework giving the
   government copies of encryption keys, and a ban on bomb-making info
   online. President Clinton blasted the GOP Congress soon afterwards in
   his weekly radio address, saying that the Republicans had stripped the
   bill of tools "that law enforcement needs to help them find out, track
   down and shut down terrorists." (The Senate will act on the bill when
   Congress returns in early September.)
                 
   The ACLU's Haines wishes the hysteria over terrorism would subside.   
   "Hopefully with a break the panic will have died down and the public
   will have informed their senators they don't want them acting quickly
   or needlessly," Haines says. "The Senate in the past has been much
   more interested in giving the FBI a blank check. They've been much
   more sympathetic to increasing wiretapping [than the House]. They've
   been much less interested in protecting privacy."

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