An unlikely coalition including Sen. Barbara Boxer, a liberal California Democrat, and Phyllis Schlafly, president of the conservative Eagle Forum, are joining to battle the Clinton administration over computer privacy.
The group, Americans for Computer Privacy, has announced plans for a $10 million media campaign against what they call a Digital Age attack on the Constitution.
The battle is over computer encryption, a scrambling technology used to protect electronic information ranging from personal financial records and credit card transactions to air traffic control systems.
The coalition’s aim is twofold: to defeat efforts by the FBI and other law enforcement agencies to gain access to private encryption codes, and to end U.S. restrictions on the export of encryption technology. The ban prevents U.S. companies from selling software that is widely available in other countries.
For two years, Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) has been on a sometimes lonely crusade to achieve both goals. But she hasn’t been able to garner enough support even to reach a vote.
“The right to privacy of every American is more seriously threatened now than at any time in history,” Lofgren warned last year. “If the FBI has its way, banking, e-mail, medical records . . . will be monitored surreptitiously by the U.S. government.”
The White House has sought a new encryption policy that would give law enforcement agencies or an approved third party the “key” to decode encrypted private files. The administration, particularly the FBI, argues that such safeguards are necessary to adequately investigate terrorism, drug trafficking and other crimes that may be plotted over e-mail or the Internet.
The coalition, formed to build support for Lofgren’s legislation, which she has resubmitted, has heavy financial backing from Silicon Valley companies, along with other business groups, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers.
Businesses argue that the administration’s argument for export controls on encryption software on national security grounds is pointless, because equally powerful software is now made overseas. Most nations agreed in 1991 to lift export restrictions on encryption software, but the United States maintained its controls.
U.S. companies fear the controls are costing them sales and eventually will undermine their technological advantage.
Rep. Sam Gejdenson (D-Conn.) said that all administrations tend to favor law enforcement and national security over civil liberties and business interests.
He recalled Bush administration cabinet secretaries arguing over whether “it would endanger U.S. security to allow the foreign sale of 286 computers,” which now are laughably obsolete.
The coalition has drawn politicians and interest groups from a remarkably wide spectrum of ideologies, united by their concern about government intrusion on civil liberties. Tom DeLay, a House Republican leader from Texas, and Rep. Maxine Waters, a Los Angeles Democrat, are both co-sponsors of Lofgren’s bill.
Grover Norquist, who instigated the successful effort to rename Washington National Airport after President Ronald Reagan, called proponents of government access to encryption “the enemies of the 21st Century, the enemies of the Information Age, the enemies of privacy, the enemies of the Constitution and the enemies of taxpayers.”