The Economist, June 8, 1996, p. 65. Encryption Silence of the bugs Spare a thought for America's professional snoops. For decades the FBI and others have counted the telephone wiretap among their favourite weapons against crime, as countless mafiosi can (and did) testify. Now, software in a computer or digital telephone can scramble a message so effectively that no law-enforcement agency can read it. For years, the government has fought back by restricting the use of encryption, to the fury of privacy advocates on the Internet, where rampant eavesdropping makes encryption essential. Now a bit of silicon and a stack of paper have apparently ended the battle: the cops lost. The bit of silicon is actually two chips that can encrypt data transmissions so that they are in effect uncrackable. Had the chips been developed in the United States, the government would have classified them as "munitions" and banned their export. But they were developed in Japan, by NTT, the telephone giant, and the Japanese subsidiary of RSA, an American encryption company, which revealed their existence early this week. They can therefore be used around the world, and even imported into the United States. There seems nothing the American government can do about it. As if that were not bad enough, America's restrictive encryption policy took another hit last week when a report, commissioned by Congress and compiled by the prestigious National Research Council (NRC), concluded that the policy had hurt Americans far more than it had helped them. For the past few years, the White House has been offering a purported compromise: give the government (or a mutually trusted third party) a key to read your encrypted e-mail, and you can scramble it all you like. The problem with this so-called "key escrow" proposal was that it smacked to many of Big Brotherism. The computer industry rejected it out of hand, and fell back instead on weaker encryption that was not regulated, even though this can be cracked over a weekend with a home PC. Up to now, the government's response to cries for better encryption for all has been to fall back on its responsibility to protect the citizenry. The NRC panel rejected this, together with the "if only you knew what we know" argument the government has usually trotted out. Composed of former security officials and encryption experts, this panel did know what the government knows, and was still not convinced. Now the NTT chips seem to sweep away the whole debate. NTT has already sold the chips in 15 countries, and they should soon be incorporated in products. Stewart Baker, the former general counsel of America's National Security Agency, concedes that the chips have probably killed encryption controls in America, but argues that the battle will continue to run in Europe, where countries such as France limit their use. For the rest of the world, these bits of silicon may indeed make it harder for police to protect citizens. But they will also make it easier for citizens to protect themselves. --