National Academies Press: OpenBook

Cryptography's Role in Securing the Information Society (1996)

Chapter: Part II - Policy Instruments

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Suggested Citation:"Part II - Policy Instruments." National Research Council. 1996. Cryptography's Role in Securing the Information Society. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/5131.
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Page 111

PART II
Policy Instruments

TO THE BEST OF THE COMMITTEE'S KNOWLEDGE, the goals of U.S. cryptography policy have not been explicitlyformalized and articulated within the government. However, senior government officials have indicated that U.S. cryptography policy seeks to promote thefollowing objectives:

• Deployment of encryption adequate and strong enough to protect electronic commerce that may be transacted on the future information infrastructure;

• Development and adoption of global (rather than national) standards and solutions;

• Widespread deployment of products with encryption capabilitiesfor confidentiality that enable legal access for law enforcement and national security purposes; and

• Avoidance of the development of defacto cryptography standards (either domestically or globally) that do not permit access for law enforcement and national security purposes, thus ensuring that the use of such products remains relatively limited.

Many analysts believe that these goals are irreconcilable. To the extent that this is so, the U.S. government is thus faced with a policy problem requiring a compromise among these goals that is tolerable, though by assumption not ideal with respect to any individual goal. Such has always been the case with many issues that generate social controversy—balancing product safety against the undesirability of burdensome regulation on product vendors, public health against the rights of individuals to refuse medical treatment, and so on.

Suggested Citation:"Part II - Policy Instruments." National Research Council. 1996. Cryptography's Role in Securing the Information Society. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/5131.
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Page 112

As of this writing, U.S. cryptography policy is still evolving, and the particular laws, regulations, and other levers that government uses to influence behavior and policy are under review or are being developed.

Chapter 4 is devoted to the subject of export controls, which dominate industry concerns about national cryptography policy. Many senior executives in the information technology industry perceive these controls as a major limitation on their ability to export products with encryption capabilities. Furthermore, because exports of products with encryption capabilities are governed by the regime applied to technologies associated with munitions, reflecting the importance of cryptography to national security, they are generally subject to more stringent controls than are exports of other computer-related technologies.

Chapter 5 addresses the subject of escrowed encryption. Escrowed encryption is a form of encryption intended to provide strong protection for legitimate uses but also to permit exceptional access by government officials, by corporate employers, or by end users under specified circumstances. Since 1993, the Clinton Administration has aggressively promoted escrowed encryption as a basic pillar of national cryptography policy. Public concerns about escrowed encryption have focused on the possibilitiesforfailure in the mechanisms intended to prevent improper access to encrypted information, leading to losses of confidentiality.

Chapter 6 addresses a variety of other aspects of national cryptography policy and public concerns that these aspects have raised.

Suggested Citation:"Part II - Policy Instruments." National Research Council. 1996. Cryptography's Role in Securing the Information Society. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/5131.
×
Page 111
Suggested Citation:"Part II - Policy Instruments." National Research Council. 1996. Cryptography's Role in Securing the Information Society. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/5131.
×
Page 112
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For every opportunity presented by the information age, there is an opening to invade the privacy and threaten the security of the nation, U.S. businesses, and citizens in their private lives. The more information that is transmitted in computer-readable form, the more vulnerable we become to automated spying. It's been estimated that some 10 billion words of computer-readable data can be searched for as little as $1. Rival companies can glean proprietary secrets . . . anti-U.S. terrorists can research targets . . . network hackers can do anything from charging purchases on someone else's credit card to accessing military installations. With patience and persistence, numerous pieces of data can be assembled into a revealing mosaic.

Cryptography's Role in Securing the Information Society addresses the urgent need for a strong national policy on cryptography that promotes and encourages the widespread use of this powerful tool for protecting of the information interests of individuals, businesses, and the nation as a whole, while respecting legitimate national needs of law enforcement and intelligence for national security and foreign policy purposes. This book presents a comprehensive examination of cryptography—the representation of messages in code—and its transformation from a national security tool to a key component of the global information superhighway. The committee enlarges the scope of policy options and offers specific conclusions and recommendations for decision makers.

Cryptography's Role in Securing the Information Society explores how all of us are affected by information security issues: private companies and businesses; law enforcement and other agencies; people in their private lives. This volume takes a realistic look at what cryptography can and cannot do and how its development has been shaped by the forces of supply and demand. How can a business ensure that employees use encryption to protect proprietary data but not to conceal illegal actions? Is encryption of voice traffic a serious threat to legitimate law enforcement wiretaps? What is the systemic threat to the nation's information infrastructure? These and other thought-provoking questions are explored.

Cryptography's Role in Securing the Information Society provides a detailed review of the Escrowed Encryption Standard (known informally as the Clipper chip proposal), a federal cryptography standard for telephony promulgated in 1994 that raised nationwide controversy over its "Big Brother" implications. The committee examines the strategy of export control over cryptography: although this tool has been used for years in support of national security, it is increasingly criticized by the vendors who are subject to federal export regulation.

The book also examines other less well known but nevertheless critical issues in national cryptography policy such as digital telephony and the interplay between international and national issues. The themes of Cryptography's Role in Securing the Information Society are illustrated throughout with many examples—some alarming and all instructive—from the worlds of government and business as well as the international network of hackers. This book will be of critical importance to everyone concerned about electronic security: policymakers, regulators, attorneys, security officials, law enforcement agents, business leaders, information managers, program developers, privacy advocates, and Internet users.

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