Federal key registration agency

[TM Peters]

Compuserve Online Today Daily Edition, 15 June 1996:

Attorney General Janet Reno is advancing a plan to establish a new agency
overseeing all digital encryption, saying that would make it tougher for
criminals and terrorists to use the Internet to carry out crimes.

Speaking to the Commonwealth Club of California in San Francisco, Reno said
her plan would require people to register with the new agency the secret
codes -- or "keys" -- they use to encrypt messages online.

Reporting on this speech, Sandra Ann Harris of United Press International
adds, "Federal authorities could then obtain the information they need to
decipher the encryptions using a court order and secretly monitor electronic
communication on the Internet the same way wiretaps are used to monitor
telephone conversations of suspected criminals."

Reno added, "We look only to make existing law apply to new technology,"
adding new computer programs designed to crack the new complicated
encryptions take too long to be useful to law enforcement.  "Some of our
most important prosecutions have depended on wire taps."

She also said registration of keys might end up being a worldwide
requirement, since the Internet is used increasingly for international
communication, commerce, and criminal enterprise.

Reno told the group that effectively regulting electronic encryption will
depend on fiding a blance between protecting privacy interests while
stopping criminals from cashing in on the new technology.

"If we do our job right citizens will enjoy the Information Age without
being victimized" by high technology, Reno said.

United Press International
Charles Bowen