problems with key escrow?

[Mike Sherwood]

I was thinking about the problems that people have with escrowed keys and 
was wondering a few things.  For one, things like the clipper chip would 
not give law enforcement agencies any new abilities or powers - they are 
currently allowed to tap a phone conversation iff they have a court order 
to do so.  escrowed clipper keys would only be revealed if a court had 
decided that there was enough evidence against someone to justify a 
wiretap (and the accompanying keys).  so these could only be revealed in 
the case of criminal activity (or reasonable suspicion thereof), which 
means that most people wouldn't have anything to worry about.  now, is 
the real problem that the key escrow agency is the weakest link in the 
chain of security? that people don't trust the government having these 
things since they could quietly copy the database to the nsa? what about 
the possibility of having some organization like, but not necessarily the 
eff hold onto keys so that they would reveal them, or better, decrypt 
only in the case of a court order, but they would also make it publicly 
known if the nsa tried to claim they had an inherent right to all of the 
info.

I haven't really thought too much about this one way or the other, but I 
thought it would be worthwhile to get some others' opinions.
-Mike

--
Mike Sherwood
internet: mike at EGFABT.ORG     uucp: ...!sgiblab!egfabt!mike