NRC Cryptography Study To Be Released 30 May; Public Invited

[31 May 1996] The long-awaited report by the National Research Council's Committee to Study National Cryptography Policy was released yesteday at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. The overview and recommendations from the report, entitled "Cryptography's Role in Security the Information Society," are available at http://wwww.nas.edu/cstweb/28e2.html. Printed copies of the book containing the report (about 500 pages in all) are expected to be available in August, but the highlights, as summarized in the Washington Post, 31 May, 1996, p. B3, are:

Federal policy should promote widespread commercial use of technologies that can prevent unauthorized access to electronic information.
The government should allow ready export of cryptography products using 56-bit DES.
The government's plan for promoting key escrow systems is premature.
Debate about encryption policies should be conducted openly and does not require knowledge of classified information.

Although the report stops short of recommending that all export controls on cryptography be dropped, it generally resolves the argument between restricting cryptography in order to assist law enforcement or promoting cryptography in order to protect personal and corporate information against espionage in favor of the latter.

The report was conducted at the request of Congress in order to inform debate on public policy for the use of cryptography. Chairing the study was Prof. Kenneth Dam, a former deputy Secretary of State and now Professor of Law at the University of Chicago. Also on the 16-member committee were former Attorney General Benjamin Civiletti and Leslie Gelb, President of the Council on Foreign Relations. Among the members of the panel with ties to the cryptography, computer security and technology communities included Martin Hellman of Stanford, Peter Neumann of SRI, Willis Ware of RAND, Ronald Graham of AT&T Bell Laboratories, and Samuel Fuller of DEC.