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Wired News
Crypto Setback in Vienna
Reuters
4:50 p.m. 3.Dec.98.PST
WASHINGTON - Clinton administration
officials said Thursday they have
persuaded other leading countries to
apply the same strict export controls on
computer data-scrambling products as
they apply to weapons.
At a meeting on Thursday in Vienna, the
33 nations that have signed the
Wassenaar Arrangement limiting arms
exports -- including Japan, Germany, and
Britain -- agreed to impose controls on
the most powerful data-scrambling
technologies, including for the first time
mass-market software, US special envoy
for cryptography David Aaron told
Reuters.
The United States, which restricts
exports of a wide range of
data-scrambling, or encryption, products
and software has long sought without
success to persuade other countries to
impose similar restrictions.
"We think this is very important in terms
of bringing a level playing field for our
exporters," Aaron said.
Leading US high-technology companies,
including Microsoft and Intel, have
complained that the lack of restrictions in
other countries hamper their ability to
compete abroad. The industry has sought
to have US restrictions relaxed or
repealed, but has not asked for tighter
controls in other countries.
Privacy advocates have also staunchly
opposed US export controls on
encryption, arguing that data-scrambling
technologies provided a crucial means of
protecting privacy in the digital age.
"It's ironic, but the US government is
leading the charge internationally to
restrict personal privacy and individual
liberty around the world," said Alan
Davidson, staff counsel at the Center for
Democracy and Technology, a
Washington-based advocacy group.
Members of the Global Internet Liberty
Campaign <http://www.gilc.org> issued a statement in
September to the 33 participating states
of the Wassenaar Arrangement calling for
the removal of encryption export
restrictions from future revisions.
"It is true that crypto used to be an
esoteric field really only of interest to
military and spy agencies," said David
Jones, director of the Electronic Frontier
Canada, in an interview last month. "[But]
all of that is changing now as people
correspond over great distances through
the Internet and their personal
communications are traveling through God
knows what computers."
Special envoy Aaron said the Wassenaar
countries agreed to continue export
controls on powerful encryption products
in general but decided to end an
exemption for widely available software
containing such capabilities.
"They plugged a loophole," Aaron said.
The new policy also reduced reporting
and paperwork requirements and
specifically excluded from export controls
products that used encryption to protect
intellectual property -- such as movies or
recordings sent over the Internet -- from
illegal copying, Aaron said.
Encryption uses mathematical formulas to
scramble information and render it
unreadable without a password or
software "key.." One important measure of
the strength of the encryption is the
length of the software key, measured in
bits, the ones and zeros that make up
the smallest unit of computer data.
With the increasing speed and falling
prices of computers, data encrypted with
a key 40 bits long that was considered
highly secure several years ago can now
be cracked in a few hours. Cutting-edge
electronic commerce and communications
programs typically use 128-bit or longer
keys.
Under Thursday's agreement, Wassenaar
countries would restrict exports of
general encryption products using more
than 56-bit keys and mass-market
products with keys more than 64 bits
long, Aaron said.
Copyright© 1998 Reuters Limited.
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