Some background: "Dutch government: All your bits are belong to us!" http://www.politechbot.com/p-02073.html "Dutch intelligence will scan satellite communications, break crypto" http://www.politechbot.com/p-01078.html The "action plan to combat terrorism": http://www.minjust.nl/c_actual/persber/actieplan.pdf ********* http://www.heise.de/tp/english/inhalt/te/9763/1.html Dutch Government wants to regulate strong cryptography Jelle van Buuren 09.10.2001 Action plan to combat terrorism targets modern communication technologies The Dutch Government announced Friday it wants to regulate the public use of strong cryptography. The regulation of cryptography is one of the measures the government is proposing in its [External Link] action plan to combat terrorism. Dutch Government is launching a range of proposals connected with modern communication technologies. 'The new terrorism makes intensive use of modern technology,' the government claims. 'Police and Intelligence has to give more attention on the use of modern technologies to prevent and fight terrorism.' One of the measures aims at the 'regulation of strong cryptography for public use.' How the government is seeking this 'regulation' is not clear. 'This will become clear in the coming month,' a spokesman told. 'We have to find some way to give intelligence services access to encrypted communication.' In the early nineties, Dutch government tried to restrict the use of cryptography. A preliminary draft of a bill aiming to ban the use of encryption was introduced in March 1994. Anyone who could show that they had a legitimate reason to use cryptography was allowed to apply for a license. Concealed within the text was a clause making it compulsory to hand over the key to the authorities. [....] ------------------------------------------------------------------------- POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing list You may redistribute this message freely if you include this notice. Declan McCullagh's photographs are at http://www.mccullagh.org/ To subscribe to Politech: http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html This message is archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------
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