[1176] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Re: German Official Pleas for Strong Encryption
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Axel H. Horns)
Tue Jul 8 14:27:56 1997
To: cryptography@c2.net
Date: Tue, 8 Jul 1997 20:07:18 +0100
From: Horns@t-online.de (Axel H. Horns)
On 8 Jul 97 at 10:30, Donald Weightman wrote:
> Anyone know how the new German legislation deals with
> encryption?
There are no crypto rules. The new Act on Digital Signatures defines
a non-mandatory infrastructure of TTPs, but does not have any GAK
provisions, see e.g.
http://www.horns.netplace.de/iukdg/sigge.htm
In particular, the TTPs are not allowed to hold any private keys. If
legal regulations concering strong cryptography should ever come up
in Germany, this would require a separate bill. Up to now, no draft
thereof has come to the public, although there were significant rumors
at the end of 1996 that such bill is under preparation. Maybe that a
very strong opposition of business crypto stakeholders in the first
half of 1997 has stopped that move. Representatives of FDP have said
that they would oppose any restrictive crypto act.
However, we should be aware that at any time strong forces from the
right wings of CDU/CSU as well as of SPD might again open the crypto
battle, maybe utlizing some act of big crime having use of crypto
involved. If e.g. a big blackmail crime would happen making use of
anonymity which is provided by some crypto techniques via the
Internet, this might be the signal for launching an emotionally biased
campaign.
Axel H. Horns
