MOUNTAIN VIEW, California -- Capitol Hill's reigning technophile, Newt Gingrich, graced the offices of a Silicon Valley public policy organization Tuesday for a meeting with high-tech executives. Debate focused on what has become the biggest sticking point between the Beltway and the Valley: government regulation of data-scrambling technologies.
The Speaker of the House tried to convince the dozen or so CEOs assembled at the Technology Network meeting that encryption would soon be free of the export restrictions that have for years -- according to the industry -- muffled the development of that sector.
"I start from the baseline that encryption will ultimately be universal," Gingrich assured the crowd, which included executives from the likes of Genentech (GNE), Sun Microsystems (SUNW), and Intel (INTC).
"In no way can [export restrictions] trap it in the US," Gingrich said.
Despite the Georgia Republican's platitudes and the lobbying efforts of the year-old Technology Network, both government and industry have a long way to go on the crypto issue. Currently, the Clinton administration restricts the export of strong cryptography in software, citing concerns over national security.
The industry says the policy is misguided, because strong crypto is readily available overseas and the restrictions place US companies at a disadvantage over their foreign competitors.
Gingrich and Representative Bob Goodlatte (R-Virginia), who accompanied Gingrich, announced plans to form an encryption task force in July. The scheme would include politicians and "some of the best minds in cryptographic research," according to Goodlatte, who also chairs the speaker's newly formed High Technology Working Group.
Such a task force would seek to reach what has thus far been an elusive synergy between law-enforcement and national-security concerns and those of privacy advocates, who say personal freedoms are being drastically eroded by the administration's crypto policy. The group would also deliver relief to infotech companies shackled by futile export restrictions on code expected to proliferate overseas.
While neither Gingrich nor Goodlatte predicted that encryption legislation would become law this summer, both remain optimistic that members of Congress are beginning to understand the need for relaxation on the crypto issue.
But Goodlatte's efforts to date on resolving the crypto issue have been in vain. He has failed to push export easements through Congress in the past two sessions. "It's awfully hard to pass legislation," he said.
While the pair debated other industry issues beyond crypto, such as protection from shareholder lawsuits and the loosening of immigration restrictions on high-tech workers, the two politicians were also in Silicon Valley to lure high-tech honchos into the Republican big tent.
"It's primarily a substantive trip," Goodlatte said after Gingrich left the press conference with a gaggle of TV cameras in tow. "But we're also here to let this industry know that ... this is a party for those who believe in a free-enterprise system."
