It is not the intent of the National Security Agency to undermine the economic competitiveness of U.S. industry. It must be recognized, however, that cryptographic technology continues to be viewed as vital to national and international security interests. – 1992
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People using Clipper would have a lot more security in their messages than they have today because many people use few safeguards on their e-mail. – 1994
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Unbreakable encryption would give really bad people, such as child pornographers, a sanctuary. – 1994
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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. – 1994
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The real key to network security is making sure that only the right people get access to particular data. That’s why a digital signature is so much more important to future network security than encryption. If everyone on a net has a unique identifier that others cannot forge, there’s no need to send credit card numbers – and so nothing to intercept. And if everyone has a digital signature, stealing passwords off the Net is pointless. – 1994
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What worries law enforcement agencies – what should worry them – is a world where encryption is standardized and ubiquitous: a world where anyone who buys an $80 phone gets an “encrypt” button that interoperates with everyone else’s; a world where every fax machine and every modem automatically encodes its transmissions without asking whether that is necessary. In such a world, every criminal will gain a guaranteed refuge from the police without lifting a finger. – 1994
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If banks and corporations and government agencies buy key escrow encryption, criminals won’t get a free ride. They’ll have to build their own systems – as they do now. And their devices won’t interact with the devices that much of the rest of society uses. – 1994
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As long as legitimate businesses use key escrow, we can stave off a future in which acts of terror and organized crime are planned with impunity on the public telecommunications system. – 1994
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The government went forward with key escrow, not because the key escrow proposal received a universally warm reception, but because none of the proposal’s critics was able to suggest a better way to accommodate society’s interests in both privacy and law enforcement. Unless somebody comes up with one, key escrow is likely to be around for quite a while. That’s because the only alternative being proposed today is for the government to design or endorse encryption systems that will cripple law enforcement when the technology migrates – as it surely will – to the private sector. And that alternative is simply irresponsible. – 1994
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In a genuine sense we have a question of “who would you rather trust?” Would you rather trust [the encryption debate] to the marketplace in which people will make their own judgments, and you won’t be able to conduct wiretaps against people who misuse it, or are you prepared to trust the democratic institutions and the checks and balances on power that have worked for our country by and large over the years? I guess I think that this debate in the end is between the people who would rather have some kind of an automatic technological guarantee against the government misusing their authority and people who are prepared to trust our institutions to prevent abuse. Seems to me that the choice of guaranteeing against government ability … to conduct wiretaps … probably is a choice for anarchy, a choice for more authority and more opportunity for criminals, and I don’t think that on the whole, looking around at our society, that we need too many choices of that kind. – 1995