In order to guarantee that the United States meets the challenge of this new means of commerce, communication, and education, government must be careful not to interfere. We should not harness the Internet with a confusing array of intrusive regulations and controls.

The FBI wants access to decode, digest, and discuss financial transactions, personal e-mail, and proprietary information sent abroad -- all in the name of national security.
This proposed policy raises obvious concerns about Americans' privacy...

Not only would Big Brother be looming over the shoulders of international cyber-surfers, but the administration threatens to render our state-of-the-art computer software engineers obsolete and unemployed.

The right to protection from unlawful searches is an indivisible American value. Two hundred years of court decisions have stood in defense of this fundamental right. The state's interest in effective crime-fighting should never vitiate the citizens' Bill of Rights.
I believe that moving forward with the president's policy or the Commerce Committee's bill would be an act of folly, creating a cadre of government "peeping toms"...

The government's police-state policy on encryption is creating hindrances and hurdles that will eventually injure our ability to compete internationally. Government's role should be to break down barriers, to allow everyone to excel to their highest and best.

[url]http://usinfo.state.gov/journals/itgic/1097/ijge/gj-7.htm[/url]

What happens when you put them in the driver's seat?  Do they get magic goggles or something?  Or do they get their brain sucked out by some giant invisible force?

Ah, that's what I thought: nobody would notice the little detail that Ashcroft wrote that back in 1997.
If somebody would give the same speech these days, he would be called traitor, and liberal pussie, or losertarian, I suspect.