Daniel Bernstein seems intent on striking the deathblow to U.S. government regulations on cryptography.

The latest chapter in his decade-long battle began to unfold on Friday, when lawyers representing both the Department of Commerce and Bernstein, a University of Illinois associate professor of mathematics, statistics and computer science, prepared to ask federal district court judge Marilyn Hall Patel to grant a summary judgment. At stake: the last remnants of a system that once prevented U.S. citizens from releasing software code that creates secure, electronic communications.

Bernstein is trying to eradicate the last of the export laws that previously kept Americans from distributing any work related to cryptography.

It's a bit confusing to some in the cryptography arena who feel that the current laws allow anyone to distribute their programs without fear of reprimand. Bruce Schneier, security expert and author of Applied Cryptography, said the future battle over encryption won't be trying to free software code, but rather preventing corporations from using it to limit rights.

Political News from Wired News - Privacy Czar: Past Haunts Present.

A former Clinton administration official in charge of privacy issues warned Friday that the Bush administration risked setting the country back decades on privacy policy if it did not heed the lessons of the past.

Peter Swire, a law professor at Ohio State University, evoked the witch-hunt atmosphere of "anti-Communist excesses" to offer a sobering reminder of the dangers of repealing personal liberties in the name of the war on terrorism.

"By the mid-1970s, there was clearly substantiated evidence of widespread lawlessness and surveillance by the FBI, CIA and other federal agencies," he said at a lunchtime address to the International Association of Privacy Officers in Chicago.

"Don't let the anti-terrorism measures of today turn into the anti-communist excesses of decades past," Swire said. "We've seen what abuses in the name of liberty look like -- lack of accountability and institutionalized lawlessness. We must assure that does not happen again."

[ ... ]

"There really is not that much leadership on privacy coming from the White House right now," he said. "There's less accountability on privacy. At the same time, the administration has less oversight of law enforcement. We don't have leadership looking into individual rights, but we have leadership that might be taking away individual rights."

Swire said relying on constitutional protections might not be enough.

"There is a seductive trap in the (Bush) administration's rhetoric," Swire said. "They are saying that they will protect privacy as provided by the Constitution. That sounds good, but unfortunately most of the effective privacy protections today come from statutes and not from the Constitution itself. That approach is a recipe for repealing all of the laws that we wrote in the 1970s to prevent this lawlessness and abuse of power."

Computerworld - Privacy Technology: A Question of Trust.

Researchers developing tools to preserve data privacy agree that it might be hard to get the public to accept that the tools they are developing are helpful and truly devoted to privacy. Many people, worried about voracious marketers or Big Brother, might think just the opposite.

"People really paranoid about privacy are going to look at new tools and say, 'I don't believe that,'" says Chris Clifton, an associate professor of computer science at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind.

Another expert, professor Latanya Sweeney at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, says that coming tools can "absolutely" protect personal privacy even with the large number of databases and automated systems deployed worldwide. But she argues that "technology alone cannot provide the total answer." Tools such as anonymity technology must "weave together" with comprehensive public policy to provide solutions, she adds.

"Our laws, policies and practices don't understand the nature of the impact technology has had on the loss of privacy," Sweeney says. "Changes tend to be slow and reactionary, rather than based on fundamental principles. This gets exacerbated because laws change as a function of years and technology as a function of months."

New York Times - free registration required Protection of Privacy by States Is Ranked.

California and Minnesota protect the privacy of their citizens better than any other states, while the federal government does a poor job, a study by Privacy Journal says.

Robert Ellis Smith, publisher of the monthly journal, said the two states have much in common in the commitment to privacy rights, though he ranked California marginally ahead.

"Both have a permanent office in state government looking after privacy," he said. "Both state supreme courts have reaffirmed the right to privacy."

"In California, the court has ruled that constitutional protections for privacy apply to private as well as government actions," he said. The state government also has a privacy office, and its Legislature is continually "tweaking" privacy laws to stay on top of new intrusions.

"In Minnesota, the court has ruled that disclosure of private facts is a tort," Mr. Smith said. Moreover, Minnesota law applies to local governments as well as state government, and the state has the oldest established privacy office in the country, always fully staffed and financed. He said Minnesota also received credit for an effective lawsuit in which Attorney General Mike Hatch won large damages from banks for selling information to telemarketers.

Minnesota and California were also among the leaders in a 1999 version of the survey, which ranks states on whether they have privacy guarantees in their constitutions, laws protecting financial, medical, library and government files, and have fair credit reporting laws stronger than federal legislation. States are given extra credit when their highest courts have strong records on privacy and receive deductions for antiprivacy actions by state agencies or legislatures.

The journal ranked states in five tiers. The other states in the top tier are Connecticut, Florida, Hawaii, Illinois, Massachusetts, New York, Washington and Wisconsin.

New York Times - free registration required Researchers Say Science Is Hurt by Secrecy Policy Set Up by the White House.

The presidents of the National Academies said yesterday that the Bush administration was going too far in limiting publication of some scientific research out of concern that it could aid terrorists.

Specifically, they said, the administration's policy of restricting the publication of federally financed research it deemed "sensitive but unclassified" threatened to "stifle scientific creativity and to weaken national security."

The category of "sensitive but unclassified" was poorly defined, the presidents said in a "Statement on Science and Security in an Age of Terrorism."

"Experience shows that vague criteria of this kind generate deep uncertainties among both scientists and officials responsible for enforcing regulations," the statement said.

Indeed, the policy, experts said, had already resulted in the administration's withdrawing of thousands of reports and papers from the public domain.

Slashdot | Science - US Secrecy Efforts Hurting Scientific Research.

EnlightenmentFan writes "The new, ultra-vague category "sensitive but unclassified" is being used to stop publication of research, according to this NY Times article (Registration required, but it's free). Bruce Alberts (President, National Academy of Sciences), William A. Wulf (President, National Academy of Engineering), and Harvey V. Fineberg (President, Institute of Medicine) made a joint statement after bureaucrats declared a major NAS report on bioterrorism unpublishable."

Slashdot | Libraries Are 31337.

tiltowait writes In response to the incredulity expressed in this story about the technical prowess of libraries, I'd like to present a short essay titled "Librarians: We're Not What You Think" - read on for more.