Declan wrote:
I just got back from the White House, where Gore's office held a roundtable plugging the administration's long-awaited and already widely-derided Return of Clipper proposal.
Gore announced that jurisdiction over crypto exports would move to the Commerce Dept; that the export embargo on 56-bit DES would be lifted in part for two years only; that to be approved for export firms must submit a detailed proposal describing how they will move towards key escrow; that the new regulations would go into effect on January 1.
Although I didn't change the title of this thread, I must disagree. This is a brilliant move by the government. They hold a (small) carrot out to industry: You can export marginally stronger crypto for 2 years, _if_ you develop a 'key recovery' system. At the end of the two years, they tell computer companies: Either you implement your system, or you stop exporting your products. If we don't like the system that you come up with, we won't approve it; and you can't export your (by then) existing products any more. The computer industry has to pay the costs for developing this system, _and_, since they developed it, it is really hard for them to complain about the details of it. Somebody in Washington has a lot on the ball. And lots of people are falling for it: Apple, Atalla, DEC, Groupe Bull, HP, IBM, NCR, RSA, Sun, TIS, and UPS, to name a few. -- Marshall Marshall Clow Aladdin Systems <mailto:mclow@mailhost2.csusm.edu> "We're not gonna take it/Never did and never will We're not gonna take it/Gonna break it, gonna shake it, let's forget it better still" -- The Who, "Tommy"