it is likely that the EC will recommeond that the EU moves to a) no public domestic use of strong encryption In some countries it's already far too late for that. b) escrow keys held by some EC agency Hah! this is despite the fact that there are NO technical experts That's quite common for the political bodies that decide in such issues. that I know of that agree that 1/ terrorists, drug dealers and dissemiantion of obscene material will be affected in the least Of course they won't be affected. Just like a thief isn't affected by laws that forbid theft. 2/ Key escrow is inherently unsafe since the holders of the escrowed keys are not part of the users' audit mechanisms - furthermore, it is a potential invasion of the right to free and private speech, and represents a direct attempt to exert more (international) state control than is tolerable by almost all internation commerce. Exactly! And I bet that the strongest advocates of this sort of nonsense are countries like France that in this (and other) respect are police states. Most large commercial organisations that really need strong crypto will of course find ways around (e..g SWIFT use DES already for banking - I am sure that the large financial insitutes will get special permiossion to use 128bit or larger keys for RSA) Others will too. It is very sad that the EC has such incompetent technical advice. Nothing new under the sun... :-( A while ago encryption was about to be outlawed in the Netherlands. Thanks to fierce opposition from many sides, not in the least "official bodies" with real technical knowledge, the whole proposal was turned down. Let's hope history won't repeat itself in this case. Piet