CDT, EFF Among Groups Urging Narrowing of Commerce's Wassenaar Implementation

The Center for Democracy & Technology and Electronic Frontier Foundation were two of a coalition of pro-open-Internet groups that urged the Department of Commerce's Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) earlier this week to reform the U.S. proposal for implementing changes to the multinational Wassenaar Arrangement on export controls related to cybersecurity and surveillance technology. CDT, EFF and the other groups jointly said that BIS should change the Wassenaar implementation proposal to clearly address human rights issues and to narrow what they view as overly broad rules that they believe could have a chilling effect on legitimate security research. More narrowly tailored rules would apply only to “transfers to government end users or for military or law enforcement purposes,” the groups said. The Wassenaar proposal should also provide “clear 'Know Your Customer' guidance,” the groups said. Cisco, BSA/The Software Alliance and Google have urged further revisions to the proposal.