The Limits of Trust

For the first time in history, everyone - Third World freedom fighters to urban drug dealers - can communicate in secrecy via unbreakable codes made available by advances in cryptography and computer technology. As the welcome and unwelcome consequences of this new technology begin to dawn on governments worldwide, responses have varied from stringent regulation to laissez faire liberalism. Written by a former General Counsel of the National Security Agency and an expert in cryptography law, this text explores the policy and legal issues raised by the democratization of cryptography and offers a guide to the ways in which the law of cryptography translates issues of trust into standards for lawful conduct. The book addresses the international regulation of cryptography and digital signatures both in terms of confidentiality (cryptography used to keep secrets) and authentication (cryptography used to verify information). Coverage includes: a description of over 45 countries' policies and laws on cryptography import, export, and domestic controls and digital signature initiatives worldwide; a concise history of the cryptography debate in the United States from its beginnings after World War II to the recent debates over the Clipper Chip and key recovery encryption; and a presentation of the efforts of the United States government (and others) to build a new national consensus on regulation of encryption.