On the Web

House Panel Rejects FBI Decoding Proposal

A House committee yesterday rejected an FBI-backed proposal that would have required data-scrambling software sold in the United States to have decoding features for law enforcement authorities. The vote was a crucial victory for the computer industry.

After more than three hours of sometimes heated debate, the House Commerce Committee rejected, by 35 to 16, an amendment from Rep. Michael G. Oxley (R-Ohio) that would have mandated the decoding technology.

FBI Director Louis Freeh and other law enforcement officials maintain that the government's ability to read scrambled electronic messages and files is critical in the fight against terrorism, drug trafficking and other crimes. Without access to a decoding "key," officials say, it is virtually impossible to crack certain scrambled transmissions.

Decoding would only be done with proper court authority, officials said.

A coalition of computer companies and civil liberties groups opposed such controls, saying that undecipherable encryption technology is necessary for electronic commerce and the confidentiality of personal information in the digital age.

"This was a very encouraging vote," said Jerry Berman, director of the Center for Democracy and Technology, a Washington advocacy group that has organized efforts against the FBI plan. Berman said the proposal "violates the basic civil liberties of Americans."

Yesterday's vote and the frenzied lobbying that preceded it marked a significant shift toward domestic issues in a five-year-long battle over encryption controls in Washington.

The bill the committee considered, introduced by Rep. Robert W. Goodlatte (R-Va.), was originally intended to loosen controls on the export of software with scrambling technology, which is included in software products such as World Wide Web "browsers" and electronic-mail applications.

The computer industry has said the export controls, which in essence treat the software like military equipment, serve only to encourage foreign companies to develop strong encryption products. Some say that controls are meaningless anyway: While the export of a jet fighter can be stopped by law, software flows freely across borders on the Internet or on diskettes in travelers' pockets.

In the last month, Freeh and others in the law enforcement community had sought an amendment to the Goodlatte bill to require domestic keys, trying to turn it into a vehicle to regulate, for the first time, the use of encryption technology in the United States.

Although Freeh's proposal has not won the endorsement of President Clinton or Vice President Gore, who both have said they favor imposing no rules on the domestic sale of such technology, the plan has picked up support from a diverse coalition of Democratic and Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill.

Despite yesterday's vote, industry groups concede that the debate over domestic encryption controls is not over.

The original Goodlatte bill "no longer exists as a political option," Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), who opposes the FBI plan, said after the vote. "Now the real discussion is going to begin between the police and the business concerns."

Four other House committees have approved different variations of the bill, ranging from the original, export-loosening language to a version that's close to the Freeh proposal. The bill next is headed to the Rules Committee, where Chairman Gerald B.H. Solomon (R-N.Y.) said Tuesday he would not support legislation without domestic controls.

"Encryption policy that does not meet law enforcement's needs is not balanced policy," Oxley said before yesterday's vote.

After striking down the Oxley amendment, the Commerce Committee voted to add one from Reps. Markey and Rick A. White (R-Wash.) that would establish a national technology center to help law enforcement agencies learn new techniques to unscramble messages. The Markey-White amendment also provides for stiffer penalties for people who use encryption technology in committing crimes. The committee then passed the bill as a whole.

Markey and White argued that domestic controls wouldn't hinder criminals, who could use the Internet to get foreign-made encryption software. They also argued that the regulations would be costly, dissuading many U.S. companies from including the technology in their products.

"The FBI proposal won't work no matter what we do," White said. "We can legislate until the cows come home. The bad guys are going to have encryption no matter what we do. . . . The only people that aren't going to have that ability are law-abiding U.S. citizens."