Imagine you are in the Justice Dept. You have to work out a policy for escrow agents because your boss says so. You begin to work out scenarios, just like when you design software. One scenario is that the FISA court issues a warrant for a wiretap/decrypt of a suspected foreign agent. The fact of the order, and esp. the ID of the target, have a SECRET classification. It is a crime to show a SECRET document to a person without clearance. Yet, escrow agents can reasonably refuse to disclose a key (indeed, SHOULD refuse to disclose a key) without seeing a real warrant. How do you solve the problem? (Hint: asking Congress to change either the classification laws, the FISA court rules, or the GAK policy are not options.) I'm certain the above was a large part of their thinking in adding the requirement of a SECRET cleared person. If you accept their premises -- note the "if" -- it makes a certain degree of sense. I offer the following two bets for which I have no evidence: 1) This will be the PR that most damages the proposal 2) If they ever actually implement the policy, they will give the clearances out as fast as they can, just to show good faith. Not that SECRET is a very high clearance any more, anyway....It's main value is in giving them another way to jail you if you leak the fact of the order and it ruins the investigation. (Plus, I suppose, obstruction of justice...) CRYPTO: Does anyone recall the cite for a paper a few years that set out a way to have escrow agents who would be "oblivious" to the identity of the subject of the warrant? And how would such an escrow agent be sure that they were not being duped by the feds? A. Michael Froomkin | +1 (305) 284-4285; +1 (305) 284-6506 (fax) Associate Professor of Law | U. Miami School of Law | froomkin@law.miami.edu P.O. Box 248087 | http://www.law.miami.edu/~froomkin Coral Gables, FL 33124 USA | It's warm here.