ACS Welcomes IFIP Position on Cryptography
Friday 23 May 1997- The Australian Computer Society (ACS) has backed calls from international IT security experts to end restrictions on the availability of cryptography technology.
A meeting in Copenhagen last week of the Computer Security Technical Committee (TC11) of the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) delivered a statement of position calling for cryptography to be freely and voluntarily available to protect IT&T systems. This statement was immediately adopted by IFIP itself as an official position of that international organisation.
ACS representative at the IFIP/Sec'97 international security conference, Professor Bill Caelli of the Queensland University of Technology, said the statement reflects the considered opinions of those actually charged with the creation of cryptographic systems used to protect computer systems and networks, including vital electronic commerce schemes.
Professor Caelli, who is Immediate Past-Chairman of the IFIP Computer Security Technical Committee, said the statement identified the need to separate the concepts of "key recovery" - whereby users of crypto systems may recover their own keys as necessary - and the considerations of the availability of crypto keys in a law enforcement environment.
"Even though similar technology may be used to achieve both purposes, that is, the ability of a user to recover his or her keys and the ability for law enforcement officers to obtain keys under appropriate authority, we believe it is essential that these schemes be separated and clarified.
"Most importantly, we made the point that law enforcement needs "shall not establish" the basic crypto methods required in, say, electronic commerce systems, where these methods could be seen as "infringing on a citizen's expectations" relating to personal privacy and information integrity within a country," said Professor Caelli.
The position paper also comments on the fact that any legal or regulatory arrangements between countries relating to crypto should be "symmetric", ie. if a position in principle is set out for the citizens of one country then those exact same principles must be shared in any bi-lateral agreements.
Professor Caelli said the IFIP statement was particularly critical in light of moves by Sun Microsystems to bypass US Government restrictions on the export of strong encryption systems through the use of a third party company in Russia.
See the complete The IFIP and IFIP TC11 (Security) Position on Cryptopolicies
This media release is available on the Web at http://www.acs.org.au/news/caelli.htm
ENDS
Media Enquiries:
Professor Bill Caelli, ACS TC-11 Representative, Tel: (07) 3864 2752 , Email: caelli@fit.qut.edu.au
Caroline New, Caroline New PR, Tel: (02) 9630 2108 or (0411) 889 456, Email: cnew@acslink.net.au
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