Forwarded From: Nicholas Charles Brawn <ncb05t_private> E-MAIL SAFETY CODE PLANS UNVEILED PA 4/27/98 10:35 PM By Giles Turnbull, PA News The Government today spelled out its policy on electronic data encryption -- the means by which people can scramble e-mail messages and other data to protect them from prying eyes. Trade minister Barbara Roche said the Government would set up a voluntary registration scheme for those using strong cryptography. Legislation would also be introduced that would give police the right to ask a court for a warrant to search computer files instead of buildings. A number of trusted third parties (TTPs) will be created with which individuals and organisations will be able to register their encryption keys. These TTPs will in turn be licensed by the Government to ensure public confidence. Encryption is essential to the future of Internet shopping and electronic commerce, but also provides criminals and terrorists with the opportunity to disguise their activities. As a safeguard, the Government proposes to change the law so that police or other civil authorities can request a search warrant, making a computer hard drive as easy to search as a house. Another plan is to create other certified authorities to guarantee digital signatures. But one encryption expert, Dr Ross Anderson of the Cambridge University computer laboratory, said the announcement was a U-turn of Labour's manifesto promise. Creating licensed TTPs would put great pressure on the public to use them whether they wished to or not, and was rather like introducing a voluntary identity card scheme. "The thing about voluntary identity cards is that eventually they usually become mandatory," he said. "I regard this as a U-turn from Labour. In their manifesto they led us to believe that they would avoid this path, but in fact they have followed almost exactly the previous Conservative government's policy. "Instead they should have left well alone and waited for a degree of consensus internationally. Under their present proposals, my electronic signature could be perfectly valid here and not in Germany." Encryption technology is powerful enough to protect messages and data >from even the most experienced computer hacker. It is a boon for businesses, such as banks, as more and more of their work is now done electronically, for example over the Internet. The drawback is that criminals can also make use of encryption to hide their own communications and data -- and some predictions have been made that as electronic commerce booms, so will electronic crime. Announcing the plans in the Commons today, Mrs Roche said: "It is important to make electronic commerce more secure. Users cannot afford to let the information they transmit across the Internet, or any other network, be compromised. "They must be able to trust both the technologies which allow such security and the commercial organisations providing it." -o- Subscribe: mail majordomot_private with "subscribe isn". Today's ISN Sponsor: Dimensional Communications (www.dim.com)
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