Two other issues raised by the commercial key escrow proposal. One is the interoperability issue and this is again an area where the government seems to be using a policy proposal to drive the market. Basically what they're saying, or what they hope will happen, is that by putting some restrictions on what can be exported the domestic market will be influenced. Because the exportable key escrow products could not be interoperable with non escrow products, that's one of the export requirements, the government's hope is that they will influence the domestic market by basically creating this lack of compatibility so that if I'm a domestic user and I want to encrypt communications in a way that people outside of the United States can decrypt it, I'll be forced to use this commercial key escrow product. One of the problems with this proposal is that there has really been no demonstrated commercial need for key escrow.
Key escrow is really a government invention that is designed to serve governmental needs.
There are situations in which a commercial entity might want to have keys held in escrow. The scenario that's always sited is an employee dies, an employee is attempting to blackmail a company by not decrypting important information, so there are situations where a company might want to hold keys in escrow. That interest is different than the government. The commercial user has no interest in conducting and decrypting communications in real time and that's what this proposal is directed to. So, those are some of the problems with the commercial escrow proposal.