Titans of the software industry were silent in the immediate wake of their meeting Tuesday with top US law enforcers regarding export limits on their encryption products.
Participants left the meeting tight-lipped, and all that leaked out from sources who wished not to be identified was that the Washington, DC, confab, the first face-to-face between the feuding forces, yielded no results.
Perhaps that's because, as executives of leading software companies told a news conference today, there's nothing to discuss. There's no policy to enforce. It's too late. The crypto genie is out of the bottle.
The leader of the software pack reminded his Capitol Hill hosts, Attorney General Janet Reno and FBI director Louis Freeh, that the same powerful encryption tools they would restrict out of fear they would make their way to a terrorist's hard drive, are already available outside the United States.
"That's a change in the world of spying and law enforcement that we cannot effect," Microsoft CEO Bill Gates said of the complex encryption codes available outside the United States.
In addition to noting the irrelevance of the government's wish to restrict exports, Gates and his fellow software CEOs pointed to their calculated expense of tapping into secret data.
The trade group the CEOs all belong to, the Business Software Alliance, released a report today that said should the government's view prevail, the industry will lose US$7.7 billion a year.
Novell's Erick Schmidt, who also attended Tuesday's meeting, said that by restricting sophisticated encryption systems in the United States while those in other countries develop and manufacture encryption without controls, "We appear to be running a jobs export program."
Earlier today, the CEOs met with a group of lawmakers, including sponsors of a Senate bill to guarantee the rights of Americans "to use and sell whatever encryption products they want at whatever strength they desire."
