From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Genie Brittingham) (by way of She Who Remembers <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>) From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Peter Webster) Date: Tue, Jun 1, 1999 Pubdate: April 25, 1999 Source: St. Petersburg Times (FL) Copyright: 1999 St. Petersburg Times. Contact: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Website: http://www.sptimes.com/ Forum: http://www.sptimes.com/Interact.html Author: Robyn E Blumner IF BIG BROTHER HAS A NAME, IT'S BILL MCCOLLUM Rep. Bill McCollum thinks it's his business to know yours. The Altamonte Springs Republican has seen the enemy, and it is your privacy, and he has devoted himself to eradicating it. >From giving the FBI expanded wiretapping authority to trying to give the agency a window into our encrypted data, McCollum has decided his role in Congress is to make sure our telephone conversations and e-mail are all within easy earshot and eye-shot of the government. His dogged and extreme efforts to invade your privacy recently earned him the less-than-coveted Orwell Award, given at the Computers, Freedom and Privacy '99 Conference in Washington, D.C. The dishonor is given to those who have done the most to promote Big Brotherism. The trophy sports a head on its side with a boot on top, smashing the side of the face. "Out of all members of Congress in the last five years, McCollum has been the most pro-active in introducing new surveillance technology," said David Banisar, Policy Director for the Electronic Privacy Information Center. "He's by far the worst of the bunch." Banisar points out that, as chairman of the Judiciary Committee's crime subcommittee overseeing the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Federal Bureau of Prisons, McCollum has been a "cheerleader," not a supervisor. When, in 1998, FBI Director Louis Freeh was shopping around a wish list of added powers for the agency that he wanted slipped quietly into a large appropriations bill, McCollum stepped up to oblige. He added roving wiretap authority -- which allows the FBI to wiretap phones wherever a suspect goes without an additional court order -- as an amendment to the huge Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1999 while the bill was in conference committee. Not only had roving wiretap authority not been in either the House or Senate versions of that bill, Congress had rejected a narrower formulation of roving wiretaps when it came up during the debate on the 1996 Anti-Terrorism Act. Members thought it gave too much power to the FBI without sufficient judicial oversight. Nonetheless, it was made part of the huge spending measure last year and is now federal law. Now McCollum has taken up the banner for another of Freeh's pet projects: encryption. In 1997 Freeh testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee that the proliferation of strong encryption threatens "the public safety of our citizens." His gripe with encryption is that it allows people to communicate without the FBI and other law enforcement agencies being able to eavesdrop. So, in the same way the FBI (with a big push from McCollum), got Congress to force the telecommunications industry to retrofit their phone system to accommodate wiretapping, Freeh called on Congress to impose a "key recovery" scheme on all manufacturers of computers and software with encryption capabilities. He wants Congress to require them to hold a decryption key that would be available to the government with a court order. McCollum to the rescue. In March, McCollum attempted to gut the pro-encryption Security and Freedom through Encryption Act, or SAFE. The SAFE bill, which is widely applauded in the computer and civil liberties community, would remove current barriers to the export of strong encryption, restrictions that are hurting our international competitiveness in computer products. (Who overseas would want to buy American computers if he knows the U.S. government can listen in?) McCollum tried to amend the bill in the House Judiciary Committee to require manufacturers to crack any encryption they wish to export, either by building in a back door or by holding a decrypting formula. Manufacturers would be responsible to provide law enforcement with a decrypted transcript of any communications it had "lawful authority" to seize. Although the amendment was ruled out of order, McCollum is undaunted and will, according to committee staff, try to inject it into the bill as it moves through different committees. His idea would not only handicap U.S. computer makers vis-a-vis the rest of the world, but would burden them with the secretarial function of providing reams of transcripts to our government. McCollum's "keep the genie in the bottle" approach to encryption is laughable, since very strong encryption software is already freely available on the Internet. McCollum is also behind a push to make our Social Security card tamper-proof and as secure against fraudulent use as a passport, which probably means a picture, fingerprint or other biometric system would have to be employed. His legislation would only hasten the transformation of our Social Security card into a de facto national ID card, which then could be useful for another McCollum legislative initiative that would require a Social Security number to vote. Apparently McCollum is not satisfied hacking away at privacy and the Constitution from his lowly House seat; he has announced plans to run for the Senate after Connie Mack retires. Since the man is a poster child for government at its biggest, it's astounding that he is so popular among Republicans. But it looks like he has a good shot at winning the primary. If "Senator Spook goes to Washington," there won't be an anti-privacy award bad enough to do him justice. She Who Remembers http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Senate/7525 http://www.remembers.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------ eGroups Spotlight: "Aok-china" - Adopting older kids from China. http://offers.egroups.com/click/243/4 eGroup home: http://www.eGroups.com/list/she-who-remembers Free Web-based e-mail groups by eGroups.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Looking for a new hobby? Want to make a new friend? http://www.onelist.com Come join one of nearly 160,000 e-mail communities at ONElist!
