Jack Straw on the 'Today' programme

[Caspar Bowden]

> [mailto:ukcrypto-admin@chiark.greenend.org.uk] On Behalf Of=20
> Roland Perry
...
> The difficulty is if Straw is being briefed that encrypted=20
> emails work within the same kinds of parameters.

Listening again to the interview, I think Straw's talk of "commercial"
encryption was probably referring to policy over a longer period.
Remember that from his perspective, he'll have seen incomprehensible
wrangling in 1997 (mandatory licensing), 1998 ("voluntary" licensing),
the first grudging engagement of Home Office officials publicly in 1999,
before getting every newspaper on his case in 2000.

When I met the DTI Minister supposedly in charge in 1998 they did not
seem to have a grasp of any of the main concepts of crypto policy, and
remember responsibility was very thinly spread over four years: Beckett
(Roche), Mandelson (Wills), Byers (Hewitt), Straw (Clarke). The
officials were desperately trying to convince *themselves* that the
licensed-PKI castle could be shock-batoned into the air - they certainly
weren't going to encumber their Minister with doubts about the
fundamental illogic of the policy.

In Straw's mind, policy is either necessary or it isn't
("one-dimensional" - don't know what he imagines is the other dimension
accessible to "civil liberties lobby") - he probably doesn't seriously
consider that one of the most important and secret branches of
government would advocate a policy that was futile against the
ostensible targets (terrorists/paedophiles, and let's not forget those
people/drug traffickers), and actually aimed at institutions constrained
to have a monolithic PKI.

He'll be getting briefing on what GCHQ can and can't do to help trace
networks and find targets, and therefore much hand-wringing about
inability to break into banking and other financial traffic. In this
regard, he has a point. In a sector already heavily regulated like
banking, it *would* be possible to mandate that all encrypted traffic be
accessible to government (and subject to proportionality RIP will allow
this under the keys-to-future-data/"or is likely to do so" clauses). The
problem is that no politician would have the guts to say that the chief
object of policy was suborning commercial and institutional traffic.

--
Caspar =
Bowden=A0=A0=A0=A0=A0=A0=A0=A0=A0=A0=A0=A0=A0=A0=A0=A0=A0=A0=A0=A0=A0=A0=A0=
=A0=A0=A0 www.fipr.org
Director, Foundation for Information Policy Research
Tel: +44(0)20 7354 2333=20