FC: Congress weighs crypto-in-a-crime, wiretapping legislation

[Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>]

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Also see:
http://cryptome.org/hr46.htm#Senate
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http://www.nationalreview.com/kopel/kopel121500.shtml

    12/15/00 11:10 a.m.
    End-of-Session Robbery
    Congress limits civil liberties before going home for the holidays.

    By Dave Kopel of the Independence Institute

    EDITOR'S NOTE: Late on December 15, the sponsors of H.R. 46 agreed to
    remove all objectionable material from the bill, except for the
    encryption provision.

    Congress may adjourn today -- but not before inflicting a
    series of blows on civil liberties and federalism. As is usual for
    end-of-the-session assaults on civil liberties, the plan is to speed
    the new laws through as attachments to some innocuous law, before most
    people in Congress have time to notice. The only real chance for
    stopping this plan lies in House and Senate leadership (especially the
    House) being flooded with phone calls objecting to yet another sneak
    attack on the Bill of Rights.

    At issue is H.R. 46, a seemingly harmless bill titled "Public Safety
    Medal of Valor." The bill sets up a federal board to award federal
    Medals of Valor to policemen, federal agents, and the like. But
    Congress, unlike many state legislatures, does not operate under a
    constitutional requirement that a bill's subject matter and title be
    the same. And it turns out that there's much more in this bill than
    just medals for firefighters. What the bill does is:

      * Expand federal asset forfeiture.

      * Expand wiretapping

      * Provide special additional punishments for people who use
        encryption.

      * Federalize juvenile crimes, which are properly matters for state
        governments to address.

    The House committee report on the bill, of course, only discusses
    medals for police officers -- and not any of the unrelated material
    which is being added in the closing hours of Congress. The unrelated,
    dangerous, material comes mostly from the never-passed H.R. 2448.

    These new provisions were added to H.R. 46 on October 24, 2000, by the
    Senate. (See Congressional Record page 10913).

    [...]




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