[People talk on the Internet] in encrypted conversations for which we have no available means to read and understand unless that encryption problem is dealt with immediately.
Predictor: Freeh, Louis
Prediction, in context:In a 1995 article in CQ Researcher, Charles Clark quotes Daniel Weitzner, deputy director of the Center for Technology and Democracy talking about the government’s attempts to patrol pornography on the Internet. Clark writes: ”Soon after the bombing in Oklahoma City … FBI Director Louis J. Freeh complained to the Senate Judiciary Committee about the difficulties presented by technologies that can scramble transmitted data to permit secrecy on the Net. People talk on the Internet ‘in encrypted conversations for which we have no available means to read and understand unless that encryption problem is dealt with immediately,’ he said. As the senators were well aware, the FBI had won a key victory the previous October, when Congress – over the objections of many in the telecommunications industry – enacted the so-called digital telephony bill. It prevented phone companies, as they convert to modern digital signal technology, from installing equipment that is impenetrable to law-enforcement agencies’ court-authorized wiretaps.”
Date of prediction: June 1, 1995
Topic of prediction: Communication
Subtopic: Security/Encryption
Name of publication: CQ Researcher
Title, headline, chapter name: Regulating the Internet
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://library.cqpress.com/cqresearcher/search.php
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Anderson, Janna Quitney