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relaxed or repealed, but has not asked for tighter controls in other countries.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 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.
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