Encryption Control Won't Deter Crime.

• Position: Encryption software - Brief Article

Legislation sought by the nation's top law enforcement officials to limit the manufacture and sale of encryption software "is more likely to encourage terrorism and increase crime than to diminish them," says Joseph McNamara, a Hoover Institution research fellow and former police chief of San Jose, Calif., and Kansas City, Mo. He maintains that a Clinton Administration proposal before Congress would create an encryption regulatory system on computerized information that would be ineffective, jeopardize Americans' constitutional rights, and become a new, ideal target for terrorists, corporate spies, and other types of criminals.

The FBI and Justice Department seek to limit manufacture and sale of encryption software to those providing "keys," or de-scramblers of messages that initially used encryption software to protect the information from unauthorized use. The key would be kept by third parties and given to law enforcement agencies when they obtained a court order. The agencies say they need keys to message-scrambling technology in order to prevent terrorism and crime. They have testified that they are aware of more than 500 foreign suspects who have used encryption in committing crimes.

McNamara, however, feels that the potential for inappropriate, unauthorized, and criminal use of the keys is great and that the key system jeopardizes Americans' rights to free speech, protection from unlawful search and seizure, and the taking of property without due process. The legislation as it is now drafted would allow government surveillance on an "unprecedented scale," he insists. "Billions of communications would...