WASHINGTON -- The United States' top law enforcers discussed encryption policy with high-tech industry leaders for two hours Tuesday, but neither side made any new concessions and an agreement still seems a long way off.
Attorney General Janet Reno and FBI Director Louis Freeh told executives that they needed more time to evaluate last month's industry proposal to resolve some of the controversy surrounding computer data scrambling technologies.
A wide-ranging coalition known as Americans for Computer Privacy asked the Clinton administration in May to immediately relax the export controls on encryption programs, which scramble information and render it unreadable without a password.
The proposal also asked the government to agree not to try and regulate encryption within the United States, suggesting instead that a center be established where government and industry experts could meet to help decode encrypted data related to criminal activity.
The group had hoped to have an answer this week, but administration officials want an additional 45 days.
"It was a frank exchange of ideas," one industry official said after the meeting. "People talked about their needs. But I don't see anything coming out of this."
The tech industry's contingent -- which included Microsoft's Bill Gates, Novell's Erick Schmidt, Netscape's Jim Barksdale, MCI's Timothy Price, America Online's Steve Case, and Sun Microsystems' Scott McNealy -- said little following Tuesday's meeting on Capitol Hill. But during a meeting today of the Business Software Alliance, a trade group, Gates and Schmidt indicated that little new turf was covered.
"Many of the ideas had been presented privately, one on one, before," said Schmidt. "I don't think that you would be surprised at the things they said. I would not suggest there's a specific plan, a specific compromise."
Added Gates: "A key point that was discussed in the meeting was [that] this encryption technology is widely available outside the United States and inside the United States. That's just a fact of life."
Industry and law enforcement officials have been at odds over encryption. The industry argues that encryption has become an increasingly critical component of global commerce and communications over the Internet. Strict US export limits allows foreign companies to grab more business, Gates and his allies say. But law-enforcement agencies like the FBI fear the products will be used by criminals and terrorists to thwart surveillance efforts. They favor strict controls on encryption sales abroad. The FBI has asked Congress to extend the export controls by requiring all domestic products to include a feature allowing law enforcers to crack any coded message.
Senator Dianne Feinstein, who organized and hosted the meeting in her office, gave an upbeat assessment. She told reporters who staked out the meeting that "the seeds for possible approaches" to resolve the debate had been sown.
"We had a very good sharing of concerns, government and industry," said Feinstein, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee's subcommittee dealing with technology and terrorism. "I think everybody in the room wants to work cooperatively and we will be talking again in that regard."
"I think this was a very good first step," said Senator Jon Kyl (R-Arizona), the subcommittee chairman who also attended the meeting.
A White House official said the meeting would energize the administration's efforts to find a compromise. The Clinton administration has searched for one, easing some export rules while promoting technical solutions to meet the needs of the FBI and other law-enforcement agencies. But in April, Commerce Secretary William Daley conceded that the administration had failed to implement its compromise plans.
Today, lawmakers opposed to domestic encryption controls will hold another meeting with a broader representation of executives and advocacy groups.
