Someone, somewhere, posted a rumour that Europe was about to go for a key escrow scheme known as "Royal Holloway". I have done a little research and gleaned the following: It is, apparently, true that the EC is considering schemes for key escrow, by "trusted third parties" (trusted by who, I'd like to know?). "Royal Holloway" is one of these schemes. It is named after the college of origin, if anyone cares. It essentially revolves around each pair of TTPs sharing two out of three parts of a key, and generating the third part for each of their users. The idea is that either of the TTPs who generated keys for an encrypted message exchange can decode it (by using the private key of their "client" and the public key of the other TTP's "client"). Full details can be found at: ftp://ftp.dcs.rhbnc.ac.uk/pub/Chris.Mitchell/istr_a2.ps This is in PostScript. I'm not aware of any plain text versions. I'm informed that this is likely to be introduced into EC legislation, though my understanding is that members are not required to actually incorporate the legislation. No doubt France will embrace it with happy shouts. Of course, it is our duty as netizens to resist this kind of rubbish, and I encourage you to write to your MP/EuroMP (or local equivalent). Cheers, Ben. -- Ben Laurie Phone: +44 (181) 994 6435 Email: ben@algroup.co.uk Freelance Consultant and Fax: +44 (181) 994 6472 Technical Director URL: http://www.algroup.co.uk/Apache-SSL A.L. Digital Ltd, Apache Group member (http://www.apache.org) London, England. Apache-SSL author