lambda 4.03
December
15, 1998
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SHORT-CIRCUITS
"What the world would look like if it were reduced to a village of 1,000 people:
Larry Irving, Assistant Secretary, National Telecommunications and Information Administration (US Department of Commerce), at a World Bank's Conference on Rural Telecommunications, December 1, 1998.
Paris, December 15. -- On December 3 Reuter's news service reported what the Washington Post later called a "sizable victory" for US crypto czar David Aaron. He claimed to reporters that at a meeting in Vienna, the 33 countries that have signed the Wassenaar Arrangement limiting arms exports -- the former COCOM pact that used to exist during the Cold War area -- agreed to impose controls on the most powerful crypto products, including for the first time mass market software.
"We've been working three years to come up with a common position," David Aaron said to the Washington Post. "This agreement brings the international regime more in line with ours. [Overseas] there's a growing recognition that you have to strike a balance that permits law enforcement to do its work".
According to reports, the agreement would let companies making commercial software for the mass market, such as Internet browsers or electronic mail programs, to use up to 64-bit keys (from a 56-bit level in current U.S. policies). But the deal also restricts exports of general encryption products using more than 56-bit keys.
Blocking exports, in the digital age, means shutting down FTP or Web sites that offer to download for free encryption products like PGP (which can have a key length of more tha 2K bits).
Same sanctions are awaited for Network Associates' PGP International, that allows free distribution of PGP to non-US residents from offices in the Nederlands, which has sign the Wassenaar deal. PGPi succeeded to pass US export rules by scanning printed code source of the PGP US version.
hurry! before it
closes!
The Paris-based Intelligence Newsletter says, however, that David Aaron's press annoucement has not been approved by VP Al Gore. Some countries also stressed on the fact that the details of such restricions were not consigned in the final document released by Wassenaar members after the December 2-3 meeting.
In France, despite the lack of written documents, the head of the encryption and security agency SCSSI, General Jean-Louis Desvignes, was pleased to confirm Aaron's "victory" for ZDNet.Fr reporters. He said,"The US diplomacy has done pretty well. David Aron can be satisfied. ... The countries that signed the deal will have to stop the download of strong encryption products [like PGP]. Countries like Canada or Australia, that used to allow the download of strong crypto, will have to stop. ... What was allowed before shall be controled now."
France, in fact, stays the only non-US country to have passed laws that forbids the establishment of PGP FTP mirrors. One of these was forced to be desactivated six weeks after its launch by a network administrator working for an engineering school in Compiegne (Lambda 4.01).
During
an interview, Michael Kubosh, spokesman for IT's European
Commissioner Martin Bangemann, expressed concerns that each country's
legislative body has to implement these accords into law. He was
sceptic of how parliament of liberal countries in Northern Europe,
such as Danemark and Finland, but also Germany, would pass such
restrictive laws on encryption distributions sites. In Canada, which
has passed very
open laws for crypto use, it will be hard to implement such
"arrangements" into law.
The Wassenaar secretariat in Vienna indeed states that :
Earlier this year members of the Global Internet Liberty Campaign, an international organizations of civil liberties groups around the world, wrote to the Wassenaar Secretariat and urged the removal of controls on cryptography. The GILC Statement said that "failure to protect the free use and distribution of cryptographic software will jeopardize the life and freedom of human rights activists, journalists and political activists all over the world."
RESSOURCES
+ The
FreeCrypto campaign, launched for the 50th anniversary of the 1948 UN
Declaration for Human Rights. It allows you to send a fax message of
protest to your MP or government:
+ Another protest site, which called for a strike on December 14th:
+ Gal Desvignes interview (French)
+ New Canadian Crypto Policy: the federal government has given a green light for Canadians to develop and use "the very strongest forms of encryption" to protect the privacy of their personal communications and records, and to protect the security of their online transactions, reported Electronic Frontiers Canada.
London, October 26. -- The british company Procurement Services International presents itself as the leading western exporter of police equipement to Indonesia. Especially for special units that have fought political dissidents in East Timor, a province annexed in 1975. According to Amnesty International, over 200,000 people out of a population of 750,000, have died since the Indonesian invasion.
PSI had the priviledge to (virtually) receive on October 26 in London one of the UK Big Brother Awards, during a ceremony organised by Privacy International with the help of organizations like the Omega Foundation and Statewatch.
PSI furnishs riot control vehicles such as the Tactica, which can be adapted as a water cannon. The Indonesian government sometimes used the Tactica with a mixture of chemical irritants which has stung people's eyes and burnt their skin, according to an investigation released in June 1997 by the British TV program The World in Action. During a special inquiry about human rights abuses in East Timor, the TV crew had the great idea to organise a secret camera footage at PSI headquarters. With a special guest as a would-be client: Jose Ramos-Horta, 1996 Nobel Laureate.
The transcript of the program, obtained from Omega Foundation people, shows Nicholas Oliver, Managing Director of PSI, making this extraordinary statement -- talking to Horta, a man he evidently did not matched:
Said Horta afterwards:
>> About the BB Awards ceremony
>> See some pictures from the London ceremony
The censorware trend (Lambda 4.02) has been slashed by a US federal district court which declared unconstitutional the Virginia's Loundon County use of filtering software for its Internet access in public libraries.
From Epic Alert 5.18:
+ COPA's update : the government and the plaintiffs challenging the law have signed a stipulation extending the TRO (originaly posponed until December 10) until February 1, 1999.
The Censorware Project, an activist group opposing the use of blocking software in public libraries, has made a report about the filtering tool, XStop. Said James Tyre, a Pasadena, Ca. attorney who is a founding member of the group, on November 25:
One year ago, members of the Censorware Project, in the action which led to the group's formation, disclosed that X-Stop blocked a Quaker web page and the American Association of University Women, among many others.
The group also announced the release of "Deja Voodoo: The 'X-Stop Files' Revisited," its report on innocent sites currently or recently blacklisted by X-Stop. In the report, the group reveals that it has been assisting the Loudoun plaintiffs in identifying bad blocks since before the case was filed.
The Lambda also received on August 22 some update news from Gilroy, California, where Libraries where under attack to filter their access by the the Santa Clara County Library Board. From Lani Yoshimura, Community Librarian, Gilroy Public Library:
+ The Censorware Project's report
+ An interesting article about filters
+ Full text of the Loundon's decision
+ Human Rights Watch released a special Internet section inside its annual report, denouncing abuses of online content controls in various countries: Human Rights Watch World Report 1999, "Freedom of Expression on the Internet".
+ Anonymity ressources collected by William Knowles <erehwon@kizmiaz.dis.org>
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December
98
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