WIRED: Congress Mulls Stiff Crypto Laws

"...Some politicians and defense hawks are warning that extremists such as Osama bin Laden, who U.S. officials say is a crypto-aficionado and the top suspect in Tuesday's attacks, enjoy unfettered access to privacy-protecting software and hardware that render their communications unintelligible to eavesdroppers.

In a floor speech on Thursday, Sen. Judd Gregg (R-New Hampshire) called for a global prohibition on encryption products without backdoors for government surveillance.

"This is something that we need international cooperation on and we need to have movement on in order to get the information that allows us to anticipate and prevent what occurred in New York and in Washington," Gregg said, according to a copy of his remarks that an aide provided."

Complete Story

Related Stories:

• Linux Journal: GPG: the Best Free Crypto You Aren't Using, Part I of II (Sep 09, 2001)
• DebianPlanet: Mozilla 0.9.1 Makes It Into Debian, What's the Difference Between .debs and .rpms?(Jun 15, 2001)
• Unix Insider: The opening of secrets - Steven Levy recounts the history of public key cryptography(Mar 11, 2001)
• IBM developerWorks: Uncovering the secrets of SE Linux: Part 1(Mar 06, 2001)
• Slashdot: Code Breaking: A History and Exploration [Book Review](Feb 06, 2001)
• Open Source encryption components and exporting applications(Dec 15, 2000)
• ZDNet UK: Ex-spook believes that software backdoors are out there, fuelling conspiracy theories(Sep 26, 2000)
• NY Times: Secrecy for Everyone, as Encryption Goes to Market(May 18, 2000)