Joe Biden: Wrong on both the net and tech

By Michael Fraase

Sunday, 24 August 2008 03:46PM CST

Section: Politics

Joe BidenIf you had any doubt that Barack Obama is a politician like any other, his selection of Senator Joe Biden (D-Delaware) should allay that doubt. Biden’s voting record on copyright, for example, is straight out of Disney. Declan McCullagh points out that Biden ranks “toward the bottom” of CNET’s technology voter’s guide.

Throughout the 1990s, Biden—as chair of the Judiciary Committee—authored two anti-encryption bills, the Comprehensive Counter-Terrorism Act and the Violent Crime Control Act. McCullagh points out that both pieces of proposed legislation carry the same language requiring government access to private encryption keys:

“It is the sense of Congress that providers of electronic communications services and manufacturers of electronic communications service equipment shall ensure that communications systems permit the government to obtain the plain text contents of voice, data, and other communications when appropriately authorized by law.”

Phil Zimmermann, the author of the PGP cryptographic software has written that Biden’s Comprehensive Counter-Terrorism Act “led me to publish PGP electronically for free that year, shortly before the measure was defeated after vigorous protest by civil libertarians and industry groups.”

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