By Declan McCullagh, 10 November 2004 08:28
NEWS
John Ashcroft, who was a proponent of encryption and privacy as a US senator and a champion of expanded internet surveillance as the nation's attorney general, resigned on Tuesday.
During his controversial tenure as the nation's top law enforcement officer, Ashcroft, 62, earned the lasting enmity of civil libertarians for his attitude toward privacy after the 11 September, 2001, terrorist attacks. He backed additional internet surveillance, expanded use of secret "national security" letters to obtain customer data from telecommunications companies, and revising the Patriot Act to make it permanent.
Under Ashcroft, the Justice Department ramped up online obscenity prosecutions and - after suffering a severe setback from a federal appeals court - settled the Microsoft antitrust case filed in 1998 under the Clinton administration.
However, Ashcroft's resignation, which will take effect when his eventual successor is confirmed, may not herald a dramatic shift in Justice Department priorities.
Adam Thierer, director of telecommunications studies at the free-market Cato Institute, said there is an "institutional culture that is going to rail for these sorts of causes and issues no matter who's on top".
On 13 September, 2001, two days after the attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon, the Justice Department persuaded the Senate to approve surveillance legislation, which already had been circulating in the Clinton administration. In a demonstration of institutional unanimity, a report released last month calling for sweeping new copyright police powers was endorsed by no fewer than five assistant attorneys general at the Justice Department. The FBI's push for voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) surveillance continues an effort that Attorney General Janet Reno and FBI Director Louis Freeh began more than a decade ago.
In a message to Justice Department employees late on Tuesday, Ashcroft took credit for thwarting additional terrorist attacks and said the department should be proud of its "extraordinary era of justice and security".
Declan McCullagh writes for CNET News.com.
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