Let governments worry about hydrogen bombs and anthrax spores, not about a useful and life-enhancing technology like encryption. IRIS , a French organization formed to promote rights on the Internet and universal non-commercial public access, praised the government's policy change. Cryptography expert Stewart Baker speculates that several forces combined to lead to France's change of heart. He ascribes little influence to civil liberties groups, finding their presence weak. Just as with the Concorde jet and the nuclear power plants scattered around, fruits of earlier dalliances with technology, France hates to be told that it's backward and doesn't have a clue about computer networking.
Further clues suggest that cryptography is breaking free of all restrictions.
A conference last week by a leading encryption company, RSA Data Security , became a public relations forum for free encryption. Exploiting publicly available knowledge about encryption technology, RSA created an Australian development team and obtained approval from its government for the export of products that would be withheld from the world market by the United States. A participant who didn't want to be identified reported that some very tricky political negotiations were involved, and that the export was approved partly because the product was not for end-users. According to Baker, so long as France held on to its telecommunications law, proponents of key escrow could push it on manufacturers because key escrow products were the only ones that could be sold in France. With that excuse gone, key escrow will be seen almost universally as a failure.