The background to this paper is proposals made by the UK Department of Trade and Industry to licence anyone offering an encryption service, with the possibility of mandatory escrow of encryption keys. This paper should be read in conjunction with the papers listed in the reference section below. Interception and secure communications are two mutually exclusive objectives. It is possible to have one or the other, but not both, though it is possible to have neither. What have been put forward as compromise proposals, on closer examination, result in neither objective being met.
Weak security translates to no security.
The UK compromise is to propose key escrow. The encryption can be strong, that is any method and key size may be chosen, but the user is obliged to hand over their key to a third party, for possible access by a government agency. Currently that obligation is voluntary, but the likelihood is that the once the mechanisms are in place the scheme will become mandatory. In practice, third party access to a key, means everyone has access to the key and thus the communication is not secure. Under either compromise there is no security.