Excerpts from internet.cypherpunks: 18-May-96 Interactive Week exclusive .. by Will Rodger@interramp.co
The White House is about to answer recent attempts to liberalize encryption exports with a proposal of its own. [...] The newest proposal is contained in a 24-page White Paper, a draft of which hit Capitol Hill earlier this week.
Kudos to Will for running this story. Today I snagged a copy of the White Paper, which comes with 12 pages of tortured crypto-justifications and 12 pages of appendices, with darling hierarchial diagrams of how U.S. and foreign certification authorities will interact. (Hint: The PAA, or Policy Approving Authority, is at the root of each country's or region's certification hierarchy.) It's very anti-anonymity: "Without a KMI of trusted certifying authorities, users cannot know with whom they are dealing on the network..." And not very cypherpunkly: "A number of principles need to be accepted by government, industry and other users... Self escrow will be permitted under specific circumstances. The escrow agent must meet performance requirements for law enforcement access." Basically, what the White Paper does is pay lip service to free market competition and suggests loads of government/industry initiatives, but it's always with the gummit wearing the steel gauntlet beneath the felt gloves. It concludes by promising industry a transition into unlimited key-lengthy export, provided they follow the rules: "As trusted partners, industry and government can share expertise and tackle intractable problems such as the insecure operating system. In times past, the cryptographic algorithm was the core of the solution: now it is the easy part. The debate over algorithms and bit lengths should end: it is time for industry and govenrments to work together to secure the GII in such a way that does not put the world at risk." -Declan