Briefs

Wired News (10/17/01); McCullagh, Declan; Polen, Ben

In an abrupt reversal, Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) has elected not to
pursue a bill that would require backdoors to be installed in
data-scrambling products for government surveillance, according to
spokesman Brian Hart.  The Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center
and Pentagon spurred Gregg to propose such legislation, although
whether the terrorists used encryption to plan the attacks is a matter
of debate. Cryptographers and legal scholars have criticized the
proposal, claiming that forcing backdoor installation on manufacturers
or distributors would hobble American companies and violate many
tenets of the open-source community.

Critics are also concerned that the legislation would infringe on
people's right to privacy. At any rate, activists are relieved at
Gregg's apparent change of mind.

(See also recent KDnuggets poll
www.kdnuggets.com/polls/2001/weakening_encryption.htm
where 80% of readers were against encryption backdoors)

See http://www.wired.com/news/conflict/0,2100,47635,00.html