The federal government has agreed to allow the export of the strongest computer encryption systems on the market, paving the way for consumers to have the sort of code-scrambling capability the government feared would fall into the hands of terrorists.
But only if the software also contains a security feature invented by a Howard County firm.
Trusted Information Systems Inc. of Glenwood said yesterday that it has received approval to export encryption systems with mathematical codes far longer and more complex than those the United States has let leave the country before.
"This is the best crypto you can ever get, and you can ship it around the world," Trusted Chief Executive Stephen T. Walker said. "This is the big one."
But the systems can leave the country only if they have "key recovery" technology, which lets the mathematical key that descrambles the coded computer file be recovered with the cooperation of a private "key escrow" agent who holds a related code. Government agents, with a court's backing, can request that the files be decoded.
The key recovery technology was pioneered by Trusted, which holds key patents that have led to joint ventures with computing giants like Hewlett-Packard, IBM and Microsoft.
Companies such as Trusted have long been stymied by U.S. export law. They have not been able to sell strong encryption solutions within the United States while telling international customers that they could not buy the latest technology. The result has been that encryption has been slow to catch on.
The Clinton administration had signaled last fall that it would allow export of 128-bit encryption systems if they incorporated key recovery. Yesterday's announcement made it official.
Trusted Information executives have claimed that a 128-bit encryption code is "hundreds of millions of times harder" for intruders to crack than the 40-bit encryption built into popular Web browsers such as Netscape Navigator. Until last fall, 40-bit encryption was the strongest the U.S. would allow companies to export.
"It's good for American business" to relax the rules, said Dorothy Denning, a Georgetown University computer science professor who has been part of the battle over encryption exports between the administration, which in 1993 proposed to allow such exports only if the descrambling key codes were registered with federal agencies, and libertarians who oppose any limits on encryption.
