In such a world, the best policies are those that seek to adapt to changing circumstance. It would be foolhardy for our government not to anticipate that strong, unbreakable encryption will be widely available on the Internet. And it would be equally wrong to prevent American citizens and American businesses from making use of the best tools available to protect their sensitive information from potential criminal threats. We are therefore in a period of transition when law must be updated to reflect new realities. Reforming the export control regime so that it reflects the need for good encryption in commercial products and to protect personal privacy is a sensible first step.
Further delay is likely only to increase the risks to users and businesses.
The Administration thought this was a good idea when it initially recommended the Clipper scheme in 1993 and supported the proposal with a Presidential directive. Subsequently, the White House has conceded that Clipper was not a workable solution and dropped an elaborate experiment within the federal government after considerable cost to taxpayers. Next came the key escrow proposal with the belief that third parties could take the place of the government and hold private keys. But concerns were raised about cost and implementation so a revised proposal called key recovery was recommended but that proposal also has problems. Now, the Administration is reluctant to say clearly whether it supports either key escrow or key recovery.