Fair public-key cryptosystems

Abstract

We show how co construct public-key cryptosystems that are fair, that is, strike a good balance, in a democratic country, between the needs of the Government and those of the Citizens. Fair public-key cryptosystems guarantee that: (1) the system cannot be misused by criminal organizations and (2) the Citizens mantain exactly the same rights to privacy they currently have under the law. We actually show how to transform any public-key cryptosystem into a fair one. The transformed systems preserve the security and efficiency of the original ones. Thus one can still use whatever system he believes to be more secure, and enjoy the additional properties of fairness. Moreover, for today's best known cryptosystems, we show that the transformation to fair ones is particularity efficient and convenient. As we shall explain, our solution compares favorably with the Clipper Chip, the encryption proposal more recently put forward by the Clinton Administration for solving similar problems.