On May 29th, there will be a successor to last year's Scrambling for Safety conference. It will be held at University College, London; it is motivated by the DTI's recent cryptography policy announcement, and by the EU's proposed directive on digital signatures.

This conference will provide a public forum for the Government and the European Commission to explain their policy initiatives to industry, commerce and the professions, and for interested parties to provide their initial feedback. It will consist of four sessions at each of which two or three speakers will present the issues, followed by a period of discussion.

There will be no cost for members of the public to attend.

DRAFT AGENDA

9:50 - Welcome

• Ross Anderson, Cambridge University Computer Laboratory
• Ian Brown, University College, London
• Simon Davies, Privacy International

10:00 - Presentation of Government and Commission Proposals

Chair: Caspar Bowden, Scientists for Labour

• `The Government's cryptography policy proposals', Nigel Hickson, DTI
• `European crypto policy - new developments', Richard Schlechter, European Commission

11:00 - Tea

11:30 - Industrial and Commercial Responses

Chair: Ian Brown, University College, London

• `Have business criticisms really been addressed?', Chris Sundt, CBI
• `Understanding and managing the risks', Jeremy Hilton, ICX

13:00 - Lunch

14:00 - Human Rights versus National Security

Chair: Simon Davies, Privacy International

• `Privacy, human rights, surveillance and cryptography: An international view', David Banisar, EPIC
• `Information warfare and key escrow', Whitfield Diffie, Sun Microsystems

15:00 - Coffee

15.30 - The Broader View

Chair: Ross Anderson, Cambridge University Computer Laboratory

• `A lawyer's view of the new policy', Nicholas Bohm, Law Society working group on digital signatures
• `The view of Britain's general practitioners', John Williams, Joint Computing Group of the Royal College of General Practitioners and the BMA's General Medical Services Committee
• `The liberal view', David Chidgey MP, Liberal Democrat Spokesman for Trade and Industry

17:00 - Close

REGISTRATION

There will be no cost for members of the public to attend. However last year's conference was oversubscribed, so please reserve your place by filling in this registration form.

If you have difficulties with the form, you can send email to sfs-conf@cl.cam.ac.uk with your name, organisation, address, telephone, email and PGP fingerprint. However we'd prefer you to use the form as it will (hopefully) save us a lot of work.

RELATED DOCUMENTS

• European Commission cryptography policy papers.

• UK Government cryptography policy announcement.

• The Labour party's pre-election position on encryption.

• Department of Trade and Industry, "Licensing of Trusted Third Parties for the Provision of Encryption Services", 19 March 1997 (the previous government's policy proposal), and some of the responses to it.

• Department of Trade and Industry, Paper on Regulatory Intent Concerning Use of Encryption on Public Networks, June 1996.

• Last year's Scrambling for Safety conference.

• The Cyber-Rights & Cyber-Liberties home page has an impressive collection of articles and links relating to UK policy issues. See also the Campaign Against Censorship of the Internet in Britain, CDT, EPIC, EFF and GILC.

• Preliminary results of a survey carried out by Brian Gladman on attitudes to the previous government's policy.

• Ross Anderson's 1995 paper Crypto in Europe - Markets, Law and Policy surveys the uses of cryptography in Europe and points out some misconceptions that still persist in government policy statements.

HOW TO GET THERE

The venue is off Gordon Street, a short walk from Euston station. Here is a map. Best take public transport, as parking in this neighbourhood is both difficult to find and expensive.

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