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Ronald L. Rivest[9]
                           Jeffrey I. Schiller[10]
                             Bruce Schneier[11]
 
                     Final Report -- 27 May 1997[12]
 
Executive Summary
 
A variety of ``key recovery,'' ``key escrow,'' and ``trusted third-party''
encryption requirements have been suggested in recent years by government
agencies seeking to conduct covert surveillance within the changing environ-
ments brought about by new technologies. This report examines the fundamental
properties of these requirements and attempts to outline the technical risks,
costs, and implications of deploying systems that provide government access to
encryption keys.
 
The deployment of key-recovery-based encryption infrastructures to meet law
enforcement's stated specifications will result in substantial sacrifices in
security and greatly increased costs to the end-user. Building the secure
computer-communication infrastructures necessary to provide adequate
technological underpinnings demanded by these requirements would be enormously
complex and is far beyond the experience and current competency of the field.
Even if such infrastructures could be built, the risks and costs of such an
operating environment may ultimately prove unacceptable. In addition, these
infrastructures would generally require extraordinary levels of human
trustworthiness.
 
These difficulties are a function of the basic government access requirements
proposed for key-recovery encryption systems. They exist regardless of the
design of the recovery systems - whether the systems use private-key crypto-
graphy or public-key cryptography; whether the databases are split with secret-
sharing techniques or maintained in a single hardened secure facility; whet