Instead of devoting time and effort to draconian laws with questionable effectiveness we should be developing the tactics, equipment and software to catch cri minals in the twenty first century. Right now we are stuck in J. Edgar Hoover's 1930s. Unmanned vehicles, miniature - remote controlled robots, laser listeners, satellites and sniffer virus software are only a few of the technologies that we should be i nvesting in. In fact, if we want to know what Hezbollah is planning then we must invest in the human assets who can penetrate terrorist gangs and tell us. We must act swiftly to develop the technology that can be used against criminals and terrorists to protect the public.
Encryption fits the bill.
In fact, if encryption is not used to protect our national computers then a nuclear or chemical terrorist at tack will have started with the hacking of a U.S. computer to obtain the design. It is obvious from the GAO report that the odds are in my favor when I say that the source of that design would be a U.S. agency or contractor. I cannot help but become al armed when the GAO admits that the military is the best at stopping hackers when it is estimated that they suffered some 260,000 incidents in 1995 alone. This means that information security at the F.B.I., N.S.A., C.I.A. and I.R.S. is worse. This is not from my report but a report from within the U.S. government.