In list.cypherpunks, jim@acm.org writes:
An assistant director of the FBI, William Baugh, spoke recently at the ICI conference in DC. He said he hoped American industry would be cooperative in making the voluntary compliance with TESSERA or other GAK widespread, because if it doesn't happen then they would need to come back and get more Congressional action, and "we found the coercive solution we had to use for Digital Telephony very draining."
roy@cybrspc.mn.org (Roy M. Silvernail) writes:
I shouldn't be surprised to see this, but it does strike me as pretty blatant. Aren't the Fibbies supposed to be putting a less threatening spin on this stuff? Or are the gloves coming off?
The latter, assuming the gloves were ever on. In the previous day's presentations at the ICI conference, FBI Dir. Freeh spoke about the need for the FBI to get not only decryptable wiretaps but also decryptable files, and pointed out that some of the proposals about limited-duration keys would not let them decrypt files they seized with a legal warrant if those files had been encrypted earlier than the warrant date. He took Q&A for a while, and I got to ask the first Q: Q: Does the Bureau favor making escrowed keys mandatory for domestic encryption? A: Not at this time. We hope that voluntary compliance and cooperation from industry will result in companies developing a single system for export and for domestic use. If this does not happen, then we will need to take further action. Jim Gillogly 16 Winterfilth S.R. 1995, 12:33