A government paper recommending that the UK adopt a key recovery encryption system could be an attempt to snow Tony Blair's new administration with a "policy fait accompli," warns a report issued Friday by a British civil liberties organization and signed by 16 such organizations worldwide.
"The relatively short consultation period of two months ... largely overlapped with the General Elections within the UK and the change of government," says the group's "First Report on UK Encryption Policy." "Cyber-Rights and Cyber-Liberties (UK) is dissatisfied with the process put in place by the UK Department of Trade and Industry by announcing a major new policy initiative without soliciting any prior public comment or review."
Charging that the DTI's recommendations fail even to mention the Clinton administration's four-year back and forth with Congress over multiple variations of the Clipper chip and key escrow, the report also slams the DTI recommendations as "provincial and ahistorical."
Friday's criticisms come in the midst of what may be a new bout of flux in the international cryptography environment. On Tuesday, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development wrapped up its two-day annual ministerial meeting by agreeing to "review developments" on the international cryptography front. That could indicate that the 29-nation group might revise its March rejection of US attempts to strong-arm the international community into making key escrow a policy.
While acknowledging a need for law enforcement and national security agencies to have a limited ability to intercept communications, the Cyber-Liberties report takes particular issue with the DTI's assertion that online anonymity is dangerous and should only be available in limited measure - namely through so-called "trusted third parties" who will hold and make keys available to the government.
"The question is not whether any such interception is wrong, but whether it's safe to entrust all future governments in perpetuity with an unprecedented technical capability for mass surveillance," says the report.
Additional signatories to the paper include the American Civil Liberties Union, Electronic Frontiers Italy, Citadel (EF France), Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility (US), Digital Citizens Foundation (Netherlands), Electronic Frontier Foundation (US), Elektronisk Forpost Norge (Norway), FITUG (Germany), Fronteras Electronicas Espana (Spain), the Electronic Privacy Information Center, and Quintessenz (Austria), among others.
