September Terrorist Attacks (11,) (2001 ): Impact on E-Commerce - E-commerce Vs. Security?

The heightened concern for security also threatened to renew the recently cooled battle between commercial interests and governments over computer encryption. Encryption is among the primary means by which companies are able to utilize an open network like the Internet to conduct secure and private transactions. In the late 1990s, the U.S. government finally bowed to pressure from businesses demanding the free dissemination of strong encryption schemes designed to fortify electronic transmissions from hackers or other cybercriminals, thereby protecting consumers and business information. Governments had long resisted the proliferation of strong encryption, fearing that it would compromise the efforts of intelligence agencies to conduct investigations into crime and international espionage and terrorism. In the wake of September 11, governments began making moves to put greater checks on encryption schemes, fearing that international terrorist networks could use state-of-the-art encryption to transmit plans across electronic networks. As governments assumed greater powers for monitoring electronic communications, encryption was likely to find its way back into contested territory. Business analysts feared that the mandated use of weakened encryption schemes could have severe consequences for e-commerce, given that consumer and business fears over the security of their transactions was perhaps the primary impediment to the growth of e-commerce in the 1990s and early 2000s.

One prominent call was for all encryption schemes to come with a backdoor through which authorized government agencies could pass. U.S. Senator Judd Gregg of New Hampshire proposed such legislation, insisting that encryption software makers "should understand that as a matter of citizenship, they have an obligation" to allow government the means to crack into any encryption code deemed necessary by a court order. This means that vendors must build all codes in a way that allows government to break through them. However, these key-escrow systems, as they're called, generated controversy, since the keys given to governments to unlock the encryption codes, while kept securely hidden, could potentially be compromised, leading to a security nightmare. Alternatively, civil liberties groups worried that governments with such keys could potentially abuse their powers.