http://www.wired.com/news/news/politics/story/5133.html McCain Open to Key Recovery Alternative by Rebecca Vesely 3:06pm 11.Jul.97.PDT Senator John McCain, sponsor of legislation that would create a domestic key recovery system for all encrypted commercial transactions and personal communications, said Friday that he is open to hearing alternatives to such a plan. "We are not wedded entirely to key recovery," the Arizona Republican said in an interview. McCain, chairman of the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee, and Senator Bob Kerrey (D-Nebraska) introduced the Secure Public Networks Act last month. Privacy advocates and much of the high-tech industry oppose domestic key recovery on grounds that it would violate civil rights and be impractical and expensive to build and manage. McCain said he met with Microsoft representatives recently to discuss a new technology being developed by the software giant that could be less intrusive and problematic than key recovery. The senator also said he plans to meet with Netscape officials next week to discuss yet another alternative. Officials from Netscape were not immediately available for comment. "I'm saying, OK, if you have another solution, I'd like to hear it," McCain said, though he stressed that protecting national security remains his "first obligation." The McCain-Kerrey bill includes provisions for setting up a voluntary domestic key recovery system, including incentives for those who participate. Critics say participation in the key-management infrastructure wouldn't really be voluntary - it would be a prerequisite to conducting electronic commerce. Encryption, or data-scrambling technology, is widely viewed as the cornerstone to e-commerce because it conceals credit card numbers and other personal information traveling over networks. Key recovery, as outlined in the bill, would create a system of certificate authorities to whom users would give a copy of their data keys. Law enforcement could then access that copy of your key through a court order. McCain's flexibility on the issue could influence the debate over how to protect national security while allowing a free market to flourish in the digital age. Just two days ago, at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the bill, FBI director Louis Freeh testified on the need for mandatory domestic key recovery, and some senators on the committee, notably the chairman, Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), seemed to agree that some sort of domestic key recovery is needed to allow law enforcement to wiretap suspect digital communications and transactions.