Is encryption technology a weapon?
This is the fundamental question that will be debated later this year when a coalition of countries meet to review the Wassenaar Arrangement, an international agreement governing the proliferation of military technology.
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) is holding a conference this week in Ottawa to create policies and guidelines for a global electronic-commerce system. Since many OECD members are also signatories to the Wassenaar Arrangement, this week's policy decisions regarding encryption are likely to influence the upcoming Wassenaar negotiations, according to David Banisar, staff attorney for the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC).
In preparation for the two meetings, privacy advocates are urging the OECD and Wassenaar sponsors to adopt less restrictive policies on the use of encryption software worldwide.
Members of the Global Internet Liberty Campaign argue that cryptographic ciphers, essentially complex mathematical equations, should no longer be treated as a risk to global stability. A GILC statement issued last month to the 33 participating states of the Wassenaar Arrangement calls for the removal of encryption export restrictions from future revisions.
"It is true that crypto used to be an esoteric field really only of interest to military and spy agencies," said David Jones, director of the Electronic Frontier Canada. "[But] all of that is changing now as people correspond over great distances through the Internet and their personal communications are traveling through God knows what computers."
Negotiations on the Wassenaar Arrangement are expected to take place in Vienna before the end of the year. But since US security and intelligence agencies have considerable influence at both the OECD and Wassenaar meetings, observers said that ultimately the encryption debate could be a non-issue.
"It's clear to me that the administration continues to follow a policy that hampers the development of strong cryptograph ... rather than protecting human rights internationally, it hurts [the cause]," said Susan Landau, co-author of Privacy on the Line: The Politics of Wiretapping and Encryption.
The participating states of the Wassenaar Arrangement are Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Republic of Korea, Romania, Russian Federation, Slovak Republic, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, Ukraine, United Kingdom and United States.
