-Caveat Lector-
The Honorable Janet Reno
Department of Justice
Washington, D.C. 20530
IN RE: Surreptitious Encryption Search Proposal
Dear Attorney General Reno:
Over the past year, proposals by the Administration to sacrifice
civil liberties on the altar of law enforcement have bubbled up
with frightening regularity. However, none of those proposals
represents such a dramatic shift as the Department of Justice's
suggestion for special new search warrants allowing agents to
enter homes and surreptitiously examine computers and disable
encryption.
According to reports, you seek to institute an unprecedented and
dangerous special search procedure that would apply only to
computers. This proposal suffers from serious constitutional
flaws. It blatantly violates the Fourth Amendment's requirement
of particularity by giving agents open-ended authority to engage
in wholesale rummaging through a person's computer after breaking
into their home or business.
Allowing the warrant to be executed in secret also raises due
process issues. As Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act courts
have shown, the absence of public disclosure results in a very
low rate of denied warrants. Instituting an analogous procedure
for domestic searches would likely result in a similar
"rubber-stamp" process.
Assigning a vastly lower level of legal protection to an entire
class of communications also raises significant equal protection
questions. Such a system would give those Americans who choose
to use or own computers much lower Fourth Amendment protections
than those who don't. It makes no sense to pass a law that
establishes a de facto presumption of guilt for anyone who keeps
a computer in their home or business.
This proposal demonstrates how addicted federal law enforcement
has become to electronic surveillance. In my opinion, this
addiction threatens both civil liberties and the effectiveness of
law enforcement. If we continue to encourage agents to
investigate exclusively by surveillance, we risk losing the
ability to build cases by traditional -- and frequently more
effective -- means. Furthermore, we end up placing too much
trust in technologies that can easily be countered by
sophisticated criminals.
I urge you to retract this proposal and not send it to Congress.
Frankly, its chances of being anything other than dead on arrival
at Capitol Hill are slim to none. In an environment of
increasing congressional skepticism toward law enforcement
surveillance requests, a suggestion as patently absurd as this
one will seriously damage your credibility, and diminish your
chances of working with Congress to fine tune widely-supported
encryption legislation, such as the S.A.F.E. act.
With kind regards, I am,
very truly yours,
BOB BARR Member of Congress
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Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh, YHVH, TZEVAOT
FROM THE DESK OF: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
*Mike Spitzer* <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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The Best Way To Destroy Enemies Is To Change Them To Friends
Shalom, A Salaam Aleikum, and to all, A Good Day.
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