In a counter to a series of liberal encryption legislation submitted recently in Congress, the Clinton administration plans to introduce its own crypto bill in the next few weeks.
Details about the administration's new tack on the issue, announced Thursday at a House Judiciary Committee hearing by Commerce Undersecretary William Reinsch, were not immediately available.
Reinsch told the panel the bill will "set forth legal conditions for the release of recovery information to law enforcement officials" and provide "liability protection for key recovery agents who have properly released such information." In essence, the bill will outline when federal officials can get access to encryption keys and ensure that those keys will not be misused.
The administration's current policy on encryption export allows companies to export only up to 56-bit encryption technologies, and they must have a key-recovery option. Opponents of the policy argue that it puts the United States at an economic disadvantage to other countries that permit export of stronger encryption. Civil libertarians say that the administration's export policy of "third party" key escrow, in which law enforcement has access to the keys to encrypted data, is violation of privacy.
Reinsch described the more liberal House encryption bill, Security and Freedom through Encryption, or SAFE - introduced last month by Representative Bob Goodlatte (R-Virginia) - as "not helpful," adding that "it proposes export liberalization far beyond what the administration can entertain, and which would be contrary to our international export-control obligations." Both Goodlatte's bill and Senator Conrad Burns' (R-Montana) Pro-CODE legislation would overturn all export controls on encryption technologies.
