FC: Top U.K. official complains of encryption, "naive" libertarians

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

[Jack Straw is the former Home Secretary and current Foreign Secretary.
--DBM]

----- Forwarded message from Ken Brown <k.brown () ccs bbk ac uk> -----

From: Ken Brown <k.brown () ccs bbk ac uk>
Subject: Ex-UK Home Secretary blames crypto lobbyists for hijackers (1)
To: cypherpunks () lne com
Date: Fri, 28 Sep 2001 17:41:03 +0100
Organization: Birkbeck College Central Computing Services

Jack Straw, the previous UK Home Secretary, sounded off about encryption
and the law in a radio interview this morning. He seemed to blame
"naive" libertarians for watering down laws and preventing security
people from spotting the hijackers. He wasn't very coherent on the
matter. Naive libertarians of my acquaintance haven't yet worked out
which law he meant - it can't be RIP which wasn't in force when the
suspects were in Britain & would have made no difference anyway. Maybe
it was the Human Rights Act, of which Straw was a strong supporter? He
also thinks his opponents should have changed their mind.  Perhaps we
would if were were as forgetful as he seems to be.

Ken Brown



Posted to UKcrypto by Ian Miller:

The Straw interview with Sue MacGregor (in RealAudio format) is on the
BBC site at
<http://www.bbc.co.uk/cgi-bin//radio4/today/listen/audiosearch.pl?ProgID=1001686858>.

This is a 16 minute clip.  The Straw interview starts 5 minutes in
(05:01).

The first six minutes were largely about his recent diplomacy and, in
my view, generally good sense.  The following transcript is from 11:49
into the click until the end of the interview at 13:45.

Straw:

Now you talk about eleven terrorists coming passed through here, I
understand that may be true, but I would also like to make this point,
I would like to ask you on the Today programme and other journalists
to cast your mind back to the approach that all of you were taking
before the eleventh of September.  I can tell you and look at the
record whenever I was arguing in favour of tougher anti-terrorist
powers or tougher powers for example to de-encrypt commercially
encrypted e-mails I was told that this was a breach of civil
liberties, almost that it was the end of civilisation as we knew it
and that it was completely unnecessary and the beginning of Big
Brother society.  What I was doing and those who were supporting me
were doing was to say "hang on a second we live a difficult"...

MacGregor (interrupting):
It wasn't this programme that was saying that, just to clarify, it maybe
people on this programme put that point of view.

Straw:

But there is an issue of the culture of journalism.  You of course
very often are a mouth piece for the prevailing non-governmental
organisations and I understand why.  But I am just saying the
prevailing mood was all one way, that this was Big Brother government.
It wasn't Big Brother government.  It was government trying to put in
place increased powers so that we could preserve and sustain our
democracy against this new kind of threat.  Let me just give you one
example, Sue.  We needed to take powers so that we could de-encrypt
commerically encrypted e-mails and other communications. Why?  Because
we knew that terrorists were going to use this.  What happened?  Large
parts of the industry, backed by some people who will now recognise
they were very naive in retrospect said "you mustn't do that" and the
pressure was so great that we and in the United States, I used to talk
to Jane Reno the then Attorney General about this, we had to back down
a bit.  Now I heard people say "Why are these terrorists here".  Well
the answer is not because of any lapse by the intelligence or security
services or the police but because people have had a two dimensional
view of civil liberties.  The most fundamental civil liberty is the
right to life, and preserving that and sustaining that must come
before others.

MacGregor:
Foreign Secretary, thank you very much.

Straw:
Thank you very much.

----- End forwarded message -----



-------------------------------------------------------------------------
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/
-------------------------------------------------------------------------