The feds

What do you think of the recent White House policy that lets companies like Netscape export stronger security products in exchange for government access?
I think that they believe that they've made a bigger move and concession than we in the industry believe they have. The difference between 40 and 56 bits from a technology perspective is certainly important. But from a marketing perspective of the software providers that have to build these products, it's 40 bits or 56 bits vs. unlimited bits in international products. For them, I don't know that it's going to make a huge difference.

Meanwhile, the administration wants us all to build in key recovery systems, which we're not against. In fact, we think that key recovery is a big business for VeriSign downstream. We think that commercial enterprises will want it for their employees' information. At the same time, linking those two things we don't think makes a whole of sense.

On the one hand, they didn't make U.S. companies more competitive in the market really, since they didn't lift the restrictions; they simply raised them to 56 bits. Also, we think that key recovery really should be driven by commercial requirements that the government can then access through law enforcement vs. a government mandate as some kind of barter agreement for raising the export requirements.

Our business isn't directly impacted since signature technology can go out at full strength. We ship 1,024-bit technology around the world. Yet, in a secondary way, it does impact us. Because if our major partners are the Netscapes and Microsofts and Suns of the world and they can't be competitive in the international market, then it will limit our market share with their products in those places.

There are at least four countries in which you can buy a toolkit to build a cryptography application that is what we call full-strength encryption: 1,024 bits or higher. That's Japan, Australia, Israel and, I believe, South Africa. So, those toolkits are available without export restrictions on them, which makes the administration's argument--that it's really terrorists they're trying to protect us from--specious, in my view, since those people can get access to those technologies in the international market.

Vice President Al Gore has said that the administration wants key recovery to be commercially driven.
I think that they were trying to figure out how to make it a win for commercial enterprises, but they forgot to ask us.

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