In June 2016 the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine convened the Workshop on Encryption and Mechanisms for Authorized Government Access to Plaintext. Participants at this workshop discussed potential encryption strategies that would enable access to plaintext information by law enforcement or national security agencies with appropriate authority. Although the focus of the workshop was on technical issues, there was some consideration of the broader policy context, and discussion about the topics of encryption and authorized exceptional analysis frequently addressed open policy questions as well as technical issues. This publication summarizes the presentations and discussions from the workshop.

Table of Contents


Front Matter
1 Overview
2 Welcome and Opening Remarks
3 Session 1. The Current Encryption Landscape
4 Session 2. Use Cases and the Feasibility of Segmenting Encryption Policies
5 Session 3. Security Risks of Architectures for Enabling Government Access to Plaintext
6 Session 4. Technical and Policy Mitigations for Inaccessible Plaintext
7 Wrap-Up Session
Appendix A: Workshop Statement of Task
Appendix B: Workshop Agenda
Appendix C: Biographical Sketches of Workshop Planning Committee and Staff
Appendix D: Biographical Sketches of Invited Workshop Participants
Appendix E: Acronyms and Abbreviations