NSA on GAK

[John Young <jya@pipeline.com>]

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.

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For full talk:

   http://jya.com/nsagak.htm