Excerpts of remarks by NSA head William Crowell to NISSC96, October, 1996: Key recovery may prove essential in making encryption scalable on an international basis. We are not the only country wrestling with the public safety implications of unbreakable cryptography. France, Israel and Russia recently imposed import and domestic use restrictions. Several Asian, South American and African countries have had similar restrictions in place for years. Others may impose them as strong cryptography proliferates. For many overseas, as well as here, the logic of the need to balance business imperatives with public safety concerns argues for key recovery. The European Union and other confederations are considering key recovery-based KMIs. The world's major standards bodies are designing future standards so that key recovery can be accommodated. International standards and protocols for key recovery may prove essential to hand off national restrictions on strong encryption, to promote a broad export market for cryptography and to establish a key management infrastructure acceptable for general international use. This would accelerate the realization of the promise of information technology, and that would be in everyone's best interest. Working in partnership, government and industry together need to lay the foundation necessary to sustain and strengthen information security for America. I wish to emphasize that the infrastructure for key management will be built by industry as a commercial venture. This task is huge. Collaboration among many partners will be essential if we are to establish a KMI that promotes the use of encryption worldwide. ----- For full talk: http://jya.com/nsagak.htm