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neous, a characteristic intended to promote discussion and synergy among its members.

At first, we wondered whether these different perspectives would allow us to talk among ourselves at all, let alone come to agreement. But the committee worked hard. The full committee met for a total of 23 days in which we received briefings and argued various points; ad hoc subcommittees attended a dozen or so additional meetings to receive even more briefings; members of the committee and staff held a number of open sessions in which testimony from the interested public was sought and received (including a very well attended session at the Fifth Annual Conference on Computers, Freedom, and Privacy in San Francisco in early 1995 and an open session in Washington, D.C., in April 1995); and the committee reviewed nearly a hundred e-mail messages sent in response to its Internet call for input. The opportunity to receive not only written materials but also oral briefings from a number of government agencies, vendors, trade associations, and assorted experts, as well as to participate in the first-ever cryptography policy meeting of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and of its Business Industry Advisory Council, provided the occasion for extended give-and-take discussions with government officials and private stakeholders.

Out of this extended dialogue, we found that coming to a consensus among ourselves—while difficult—was not impossible. The nature of a consensus position is that it is invariably somewhat different from a position developed, framed, and written by any one committee member, particularly before our dialogue and without comments from other committee members. Our consensus is a result of the extended learning and interaction process through which we lived rather than any conscious effort to compromise or to paper over differences. The committee stands fully behind its analysis, findings, and recommendations.

We believe that our report makes some reasonable proposals for national cryptography policy. But a proposal is just that—a proposal for action. What is needed now is a public debate, using and not sidestepping the full processes of government, leading to a judicious resolution of pressing cryptography policy issues and including, on some important points, legislative action. Only in this manner will the policy crisis come to a satisfactory and stable resolution.

dures, these potential financial conflicts of interest were thoroughly discussed by the committee; no one with a direct and substantial financial stake in the outcome of the report served on the committee.