If you want to keep your neighbors from listening in on your cordless phone, if you want to keep unscrupulous competitors from stealing your secrets, even if you want to keep foreign governments from knowing your business plans, key escrow encryption will provide all the security you need, and more.
We can’t afford as a society to protect pedophiles and criminals today just to keep alive the far-fetched notion that some future tyrant will be brought down by guerrillas wearing bandoleers and pocket protectors and sending PGP-encrypted messages to each other across cyberspace.
The world will be a safer place if criminals cannot take advantage of a ubiquitous, standardized encryption infrastructure that is immune from any conceivable law enforcement wiretap. Even if you’re worried about illegal government taps, key escrow reinforces the existing requirement that every wiretap and every decryption must be lawfully authorized. The key escrow system means that proof of authority to tap must be certified and audited, so that illegal wiretapping by a rogue prosecutor or police officer is, as a practical matter, impossible.
As information technologies continue to converge, more strategic alliances will form. These partnerships play a critical role in the development of new products and services.
On-demand digital video and multimedia applications promise exciting services. Customers click a remote-control pad to order and instantly receive a film or show from a library of thousands of programs. School students wander through a multimedia book that offers text, sound, and video clips, or play interactive games with other people from all over the world.
The Information Superhighway promises new applications including videoconferences, on-demand video, and multimedia, where users interactively participate with video.
Computers complement television. No technological pathway – neither Muppets nor modem – leads directly to a good education.
When the issues of standards are resolved and prices drop, ATM will be a very attractive technology to deliver digital phone, video, and multimedia applications.
Several technologies, including ISDN and ATM, will be critical in delivering the services of the Information Superhighway to your home.
Isolated facts don’t make an education. Meaning doesn’t come from data alone. Creative problem solving depends on context, interrelationships and experience. The surrounding matrix may be more important than the individual lumps of information. And only human beings can teach the connections between things.