Industry groups say a proposed change to US encryption regulations doesn_t go far enough.

The Clinton administration_s draft rules released Tuesday would relax current restrictions on the overseas shipments of data-scrambling products, but controls would still remain. «Instead of a clean lifting of export restrictions, we have a complicated morass of regulations,» said Ed Gillespie, director of Americans for Computer Privacy. «Today_s draft falls short of what was promised on 16 September when the Administration said that the new the regulations would shift the current process from an antiquated licensing scheme to a realistic reporting scheme,» the Business Software Alliance said. Public comments are due by 6 December, and the Commerce Department has pledged to publish the final regulations by 15 December. Violators can be punished with prison sentences and fines. The proposal says: «You may export and re-export to any end-user retail encryption commodities, software and components... Encryption products exported under this paragraph can be used to provide products and services to any end-user.» But it_s unclear what the term «retail» product covers. White House officials hope the rules, outlined in September, will satisfy tech firms, which have long argued that President Clinton_s executive order restricting the export of strong encryption hurts US competitiveness. With the help of top House Republicans, business groups have waged a fierce lobbying campaign to pass a law relaxing export controls and had hoped for a vote on the floor of the House this fall. US law enforcement officials have opposed the wide distribution of encryption products, and the FBI once sought to make it a crime for Americans to sell them domestically.