Network Associates , which owns cryptography software firm PGP and firewall vendor Trusted Information Systems, dropped out of the Key Recovery Alliance last December to protect the PGP brand, which some civil-liberties advocates say was tainted by its association with the alliance.
Activists charge that the alliance promotes technology that poses a threat to civil liberties.
The alliance says it is not a lobbying group but does support the concept of key recovery, a system in which a copy of the secret key that unlocks scrambled data is placed in escrow. Several executives are former employees of the National Security Agency, which is believed to be a prime advocate of key recovery in Washington. Currently, the Clinton administration bars the export of strong encryption products that do not include a key-recovery component. The policy has long irked security software companies who see the policy as giving foreign competition an unfair advantage. Civil liberties advocates dislike key recovery because they feel it is the start of a slippery slope toward so-called mandatory key recovery, which would give the government access to private data.