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Is the Cyberworld A Threat? (1997-10-14)

Public Broadcasting1997Creative Commons
Poster for Is the Cyberworld A Threat? (1997-10-14)

About this film

The spiraling use of the Internet was stirring up all sorts of new questions--as our guest puts it, "The Department of Justice is up against areas now, perhaps, where the laws that were written fifty or a hundred years ago are just no longer adequate." His own company was testing, via its lawsuit against Microsoft, how the antitrust laws applied to linked products. And then there was the FBI's demand that encryption be made illegal--or, failing that, that the FBI hold the keys: JB: "There is some question as to the right to hold the keys of private citizens on the presumption that [the FBI] might need them.... I don't think that I, as a private citizen, if I haven't broken any law, am prohibited from having a private conversation with another private citizen without any intervention, court-ordered or not." WFB: "Now wait a minute. You would deny the authority of a court to authorize somebody to open your mail if, let's say, you were a suspected kidnapper?" JB: "No, but I said I was not a suspected kidnapper. You see,... they're presuming guilt because they're taking the key in advance. That's what I'm arguing against...." WFB: "It's on the order of comprehensively opening everybody…

Directors & creators

Southern Educational Communications Association

Subjects

public broadcasting, AAPB, William F. Buckley Jr., Microsoft, United States Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Antitrust law, Internet privacy, Encryption, Cybersecurity, Computer crime, Information technology, Law enforcement, Civil liberties, Surveillance, United States v. Microsoft Corp.

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