"The Scotsman" on key escrow

[George Ross]

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In an article entitled "The Last Frontier" in the Interactive section of =

yesterday's Scotsman newspaper, on-line at

http://www.scotsman.com/cgi-bin/t3-2.cgi/Scotsman.taf?_function=3Ddetail&=
Articles_uid1=3D700&_UserReference=3DF3BDF29BAA31D7D637677EA9

we find the following paragraph:

 Nowhere is this better illustrated than in the Government=92s imminent
 climbdown over the significant area of "key escrow" in its forthcoming
 e-commerce bill. Here, a fairly reasonable attempt to have access to som=
e kind
 of "master key" to any software encryption or scrambling used by UK
 companies was strongly resisted by almost all user groups, the leading t=
rade
 publication Computer Weekly and the Government=92s own trade and industr=
y
 select committee, even though it means criminals and terrorists, as well=
 as
 legitimate interests, can communicate without fear of eavesdropping. The=
 bulk
 of the resistance was on purely commercial grounds, saying that, as the
 committee report put it: "The Government intended to use legislation to =
control
 cryptography rather than encourage e-commerce."

There's an "email the editor" link on the home page, should anyone want t=
o =

follow up this or any of the article's other claims.
- -- =

Dr George D M Ross, Division of Informatics, University of Edinburgh
     Kings Buildings, Mayfield Road, Edinburgh, Scotland, EH9 3JZ
Mail: gdmr@dcs.ed.ac.uk   Voice: +44 131 650 5147   Fax: +44 131 667 7209=

 PGP: 1024/B74A4F7D  14 E8 B3 00 20 04 68 F8  95 40 CB 36 A4 D4 FA 90



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