ACLU Calls White House Report on Internet Crime
Law Enforcement "Wish List"
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Thursday, March 9, 2000
WASHINGTON-- A White House report on blocking Internet crime
contains
dangerous recommendations that would strip away basic privacy,
free speech
and free press protections, the American Civil Liberties Union
warned
today.
The report, scheduled to be made public this morning at Attorney
General
Janet Reno's weekly press briefing, "raises a number of civil
liberties
concerns," the ACLU said in a letter, including suggestions for
stripping
away anonymity online, lowering the privacy threshold for
telephone as well
as online communications, and threatening laws protecting free
speech
rights of anyone using a computer, including news reporters.
"The Attorney General and Congress should view this report for
what it is
-- a law enforcement wish list," said Barry Steinhardt,
Associate Director
of the national ACLU and an author of the letter. "If our
government truly
wants to combat cybercrime, then it should look to build up our
defenses
through more secure networks and encryption rather than
stripping away
rights."
Entitled "The Electronic Frontier: the Challenge of Unlawful
Conduct
Involving the Use of the Internet," the report was prepared by
the
President's Working Group on Unlawful Conduct On the Internet, a
group that
includes FBI Director Louis Freeh, Treasury Secretary Larry
Summers,
Commerce Secretary William Daley, and representatives from the
military,
DEA, and Secret Service.
Yet despite the report's sweeping recommendations for dealing
with
cybercrime, the ACLU said, nowhere does it document the extent
or threat of
such crime or explain why the threat is so serious as to warrant
dramatically expanded police powers.
Gregory T. Nojeim, a Legislative Counsel with the ACLU's
Washington
National Office, said that some legal protections may indeed be
outdated,
but that the law needs to catch up with, not dismantle, our
privacy
protections. He particularly took issue with the report's
reference to
privacy and anonymity as a "thorny issue."
"Anonymity on the Internet is not a 'thorny issue,' it is a
constitutional
right," Nojeim said. "Law enforcement and national security
agencies want
to outlaw the digital equivalent of pen names."
The ACLU letter, sent yesterday to Reno, was signed by
Steinhardt, Nojeim
and Laura W. Murphy, director of the ACLU's Washington National
Office. The
letter is available online at:
http://www.aclu.org/congress/l030800a.html
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