On Fri, 26 Jan 1996, jim bell wrote:
I'm not saying we should somehow try to prevent people from developing truly voluntary key-escrow systems; rather, I'm saying that their existence should alert us to the danger.
True - and while the administration/FBI and their pawns at NIST (most of which are ex-NSA) recognize they can't force total key escrow right now, they are working on a FIPS to ensure that all government software purchases include government key escrow, to try to tilt the marketplace towards this idea.
From the various Key Escrow meetings I've gone to, the main people who said they want voluntary escrow was mainly banking concerns, and they certainly wanted it in safe hands, not in the hands of the government. Infact no one from industry was concerned about "immediate key escrow" for tapping phone lines (except for this crazy guy from IBM). Key escrow was only seen as useful in terms of data recovery.
-Thomas