The Royal Holloway TTP-based key escrow scheme

In this paper we describe the Royal Holloway key escrow scheme, which provides a solution to the problem of managing cryptographic keys for end-to-end encryption in a way that meets legal requirements for warranted interception. 8/6/96 The Royal Holloway TTP-based key escrow scheme 2 1. Introduction There has been much recent discussion on the question of how to meet users' requirements for security services, such as confidentiality and authentication, whilst at the same time meeting legitimate requirements of government agencies for access to communications; a survey of recent work can be found in an article by Denning and Branstad, [1]. The discussion has been largely prompted by the US government's Clipper proposals [2], as well as the increasing use of electronic means for transferring commercially sensitive data. On the one hand, users want the ability to communicate securely with other users, wherever they may be, and on the other hand, governments have requirements to interc..