IV. INTEGRATION

[51] The Principles in Section V of this Annex are presented in a logical order so the concepts expressed progress from one to the nest: the Principles do not appear in order of priority.

SECRETARIAT NOTE: The order of the Principles in Section V has been modified slightly to make the flow more logical: the Principles on “trust” and “choice” have been reversed, and the proposed Principle on “privacy” was added between the Principles on “interoperability” and “lawful access”.

[52] Each of the Principles in Section V of this Annex independently addresses important policy concerns. However, these Principles are intended to be interdependent: the Principles should be taken as a whole and no individual Principle should be implemented in isolation to the others.

[53] The Principles in Section V of this Annex are meant to be implemented in a way which balances the various interests at stake. Member countries should encourage the use of robust cryptographic methods that do not adversely affect public safety, law enforcement and national security, without unnecessarily restricting user choice of cryptography, demand-driven development of cryptographic products, or protection of privacy.

SECRETARIAT NOTE: This section has been drafted to address the issues of ordering and ranking/precedence of the Principles, which were the subject of considerable discussion at the June meeting.

The concept of ranking/precedence is problematic: to the extent that the “Voluntary Choice”, “Demand-Driven Development”, “Privacy” and “Lawful Access” Principles have conflicting elements, saying only that the Principles should be taken as a whole, as was done in the 15 July draft, is insufficient.

It is argued that, since national governments can decide for themselves the priority to give the Principles, there is no need to prioritise the Principles in these Guidelines. The opposing argument is that the Guidelines must suggest a resolution to the conflicts among the Principles in order to give coherent advice to national governments on the implementation of the Guidelines, so that internationally compatible policies are developed.

One way to address this conflict is to include in this section a resolution of the conflicts among the Principles (e.g., the Principles of “Voluntary Choice” and “Demand-Driven Development” are the key elements of international cryptography policy, but they are restricted by the responsibility of governments to provide for “Privacy” and “Lawful Access”). This section now includes language which may address tints concern.

V. PRINCIPLES

SECRETARIAT NOTE: In the 15 July draft the Secretariat proposed changing the title of this section to “Guidelines”. The title has been returned to its original form “Principles” in this version: while the word “Principles” might not precisely describe this section, the terms are established within the Group, and to change it at this point to “Guidelines” has proved to be too confusing. Furthermore, the current form is consistent with the Security and Privacy Guidelines.