Abstract
Key escrow systems are those where part or all of the cryptographic keys are kept “in escrow” by third parties. The keys are released only upon proper authority to allow some person other than the original sender or receiver to read the message. The U. S. government is strongly supporting key escrow as a way to balance the needs for secrecy between communicating persons against the needs of law enforcement and national security agencies to sometimes read these encrypted communications (with proper legal authority). This chapter presents the technical aspects of the Clipper Chip, the U.S. Government’s first proposed key escrow system. It also mentions how Clipper fits into other proposed government cryptosystems and then presents a more general view of key escrow cryptosystems.
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© 1995 Springer-Verlag New York
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Denning, D.E. et al. (1995). Key Escrow Cryptosystems. In: Hoffman, L.J. (eds) Building in Big Brother. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-2524-9_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-2524-9_3
Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY
Print ISBN: 978-0-387-94441-8
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