The Crypto Controversy: A Key Conflict in the Information Society Law and Electronic Commerce

Cryptography is essential for information security and electronic commerce, yet it can also be abused by criminals to thwart police wiretaps and computer searches. How should governments address this conflict of interests? Will they require people to deposit crypto keys with a `trusted' agent? Will governments outlaw cryptography that does not provide for law-enforcement access?

Can the police require suspects to hand over keys, thus infringing the privilege against self-incrimination? Or should law enforcement forget about wiretapping and computer searches altogether? This is not yet another study of the crypto controversy to conclude that this or that interest is paramount.

This is not a study commissioned by a government, nor is it a report that campaigns on the electronic frontier. The Crypto Controversy is neither a cryptography handbook nor a book drenched in legal jargon. The Crypto Controversy pays attention to the reasoning of both privacy activists and law-enforcement agencies, to the particulars of technology as well as of law, to `solutions' offered both by cryptographers and by governments.

Koops proposes a method to balance the conflicting interests and applies this to the Dutch situation, explaining both technical and legal issues for anyone interested in the subject.