Organizer: John Kasdan, Columbia University

This project is part of the Institute's general interest in investigating the remaining bottlenecks to all electronic communications. Advances in cryptology have made possible secure communication between parties without the need for transferring encryption and decryption keys prior to the time when the parties wish to communicate. The same technology can also produce digital signatures which are virtually impossible to forge, and could be used to validate legal and financial documents. However, despite the advantages of these new technologies, a combination of intellectual property restrictions, governmental objections and bureaucratic inertia has caused the usage of these techniques to be almost non-existent. The project will survey the new cryptographic technologies and the impediments which have been raised to their implementation. The possible impact of these methods will also be discussed.