On the mailing list for the "Electronic Frontier Canada" (similar to, but not a part of EFF), David Jones (djones@insight.dcss.McMaster.CA) writes:

Feds want encryption; Police opposition ignored.

The federal government wants its employees, and Canadians in general, to use strong, public-key encryption. Yes, the same encryption methods that American law enforcement is so uptight about. The same encryption that Canadian cops want to avoid, so they can continue to eavesdrop.

It's summarized in a recent Ottawa Citizen article:

gopher://insight.mcmaster.ca/00/org/efc/media/citizen.13feb96

You may recall the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police (CACP) have voiced their opposition to any encryption of communications unless police had access to a "backdoor" last summer.

gopher://insight.mcmaster.ca/00/org/efc/law/cacp.24aug95

In Canada, it looks like the right to privacy of telecommunications might take precedence over the police interest in snooping to catch criminals.

I won't repost the entire article here, but here are some highlights: - The system is initially intended to secure email between federal government employees. Deployment is expected to begin next year. - Key management is decentralized; each department hands out its own keys. - Top-secret messages will be encoded using "palm-sized computer cards" (presumably some kind of PCMCIA device). - The Communications Security Establishment (~= NSA) helped to design the system, and claims that it's "more sophisticated than existing public versions". (This is the part that still worries me a bit, even though EFC's David Jones is quoted as saying that he has no concerns. Will the algorithms be published? Also, why develop a new, untested system -- why not just buy the thing from RSA, Viacrypt, etc.? Stay tuned...) - There's a great quote from Bob Little, deputy secretary of financial and information management for the Treasury Board: "[The CSE] don't have access to the keys . . . and never will. We did it to avoid the American experience with the Clipper Chip." - The RCMP (~= FBI) is not amused. All in all, it sounds like a positive development for once. -- Martin Janzen janzen@idacom.hp.com