Friday, May 29, 2009

Obama's Cyber-Czar to push for Key-Escrow?

The HITECH Act, passed as part of the stimulus bill, demands that medical computers are both made to be secure and be able to interchange information.

Now with his plan to name a Cyber-Czar, will Obama go back to the defeated Clinton proposal of key escrow for encryption?

Key escrow, basically having the government have the "keys" to crack encryption would almost be required should the twin demands of the HITECH Act, security and interchangeability be enforced. Otherwise how are systems going to be able to securly transmit data and share it amongst different medical practice groups. The other issue, that of audits of the encrypted information, as well as disposiiton of medical records from doctros that leave practice will also demand the passwords and keys to those records cna be retrieved.

My prediction is this new Cyber-Czar, Cyber-Czarina or Cyber-Czardine will propose a uniform encryption scheme along with key escrow, at first in computers covered under HITECH Act and later to push to include far more.

I think this calls for a traditional Jewish blessing for the Cyber-Czar:


"May God bless and keep the Cyber-Czar -- far away from us!"

1 comment:

Scott said...

Aaron - you're entirely missing the point.

The fedgov is doing such a good job protecting their own computers, they just want to share the ... wealth.

p.s. Hope my sarcasm didn't drip on your keyboard and ruin it!