Cryptography and the
Intelligence Community
The Future of Encryption
_____
Committee on the Future of Encryption
Intelligence Community Studies Board
Division on Engineering and Physical Sciences
Consensus Study Report
THE NATIONAL ACADEMIES PRESS 500 Fifth Street, NW Washington, DC 20001
This study was supported by Contract No. 2020-20011300401-002 with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication do not necessarily reflect the views of any agency or organization that provided support for the project.
International Standard Book Number-13: 978-0-309-49135-8
International Standard Book Number-10: 0-309-49135-5
Digital Object Identifier: https://doi.org/10.17226/26168
Copies of this publication are available from
Intelligence Community Studies Board
National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine
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Suggested citation: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. Cryptography and the Intelligence Community: The Future of Encryption. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/26168.
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COMMITTEE ON THE FUTURE OF ENCRYPTION
STEVEN B. LIPNER, NAE,1 SAFECode/Carnegie Mellon University, Chair
MARK LOWENTHAL, Intelligence & Security Academy, LLC, Vice Chair
HANS ROBERT DAVIES, Toffler Associates
CHIP ELLIOTT, BBN Technologies
GLENN S. GERSTELL, Center for Strategic & International Studies
NADIA HENINGER, University of California, San Diego
SENY KAMARA, Brown University
PAUL CARL KOCHER, NAE, American Cryptographer
BRIAN LAMACCHIA, Microsoft Research
BUTLER W. LAMPSON, NAS2/NAE, Microsoft Research
RAFAIL OSTROVSKY, University of California, Los Angeles
ELIZABETH RINDSKOPF PARKER, State Bar of California (retired)
PETER SWIRE, Georgia Institute of Technology
PETER J. WEINBERGER, Google, Inc.
Staff
CARYN A. LESLIE, Acting Director, Intelligence Community Studies Board
JON EISENBERG, Director, Computer Science and Telecommunications Board
LYNETTE MILLETT, Senior Program Officer, Computer Science and Telecommunications Board
MARGUERITE SCHNEIDER, Administrative Coordinator, Intelligence Community Studies Board
___________________
1 Member, National Academy Engineering.
2 Member, National Academy of Sciences.
INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY STUDIES BOARD
MARK LOWENTHAL, Intelligence & Security Academy, LLC, Co-Chair
MICHAEL A. MARLETTA, NAS1/NAM,2 University of California, Berkeley, Co-Chair
JOEL BRENNER, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
ROBERT CARDILLO, The Cardillo Group, LLC
FREDERICK R. CHANG, NAE,3 Southern Methodist University
DEAN CHENG, The Heritage Foundation
ROBERT C. DYNES, NAS, University of California (president emeritus)
ROBERT A. FEIN, Harvard Medical School
HUBAN A. GOWADIA, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
MARGARET A. HAMBURG, NAM, Nuclear Threat Initiative
MIRIAM E. JOHN, Independent Consultant
ANITA K. JONES, NAE, University of Virginia (professor emerita)
STEVEN E. KOONIN, NAS, Center for Urban Science and Progress
CARMEN L. MIDDLETON, The Walt Disney Company
ARTHUR L. MONEY, NAE, Department of Defense
WILLIAM C. OSTENDORFF, United States Naval Academy
DAVID A. RELMAN, NAM, Stanford University
ELIZABETH RINDSKOPF PARKER, State Bar of California (retired)
SAMUEL S. VISNER, The MITRE Corporation
DAVID A. WHELAN, NAE, Cubic
Staff
DIONNA ALI, Associate Program Officer
BRYAN BUNNELL, Research Associate
JOSEPH CZIKA, Senior Program Officer
MICHAEL ANTHONY FAINBERG, Senior Program Officer
CARYN A. LESLIE, Acting Director
NIA JOHNSON, Program Officer
MARGUERITE SCHNEIDER, Administrative Coordinator
___________________
1 Member, National Academy of Sciences.
2 Member, National Academy of Medicine.
3 Member, National Academy of Engineering.
Acknowledgment of Reviewers
This Consensus Study Report was reviewed in draft form by individuals chosen for their diverse perspectives and technical expertise. The purpose of this independent review is to provide candid and critical comments that will assist the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine in making each published report as sound as possible and to ensure that it meets the institutional standards for quality, objectivity, evidence, and responsiveness to the study charge. The review comments and draft manuscript remain confidential to protect the integrity of the deliberative process.
We thank the following individuals for their review of this report:
Cynthia Beall, NAS,1 Case Western Reserve University,
Thomas A. Berson, NAE,2 Salesforce,
Susan Landau, The Fletcher School and Tufts School of Engineering,
Marvin J. Langston, Langston Associates, LLC,
John Manferdelli, VMWare,
Julie J.H.C. Ryan, Wyndrose Technical Group, and
Fred Schneider, NAE, Cornell University.
Although the reviewers listed above provided many constructive comments and suggestions, they were not asked to endorse the conclusions or recommendations of this report nor did they see the final draft before its release. The review of this report was overseen by Robert F. Sproull, NAE, University of Massachusetts Amherst, and Deborah Westphal, Toffler Associates. They were responsible for making certain that an independent examination of this report was carried out in accordance with the standards of the National Academies and that all review comments were carefully considered. Responsibility for the final content rests entirely with the authoring committee and the National Academies.
___________________
1 Member, National Academy of Sciences.
2 Member, National Academy of Engineering.
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Preface
The U.S. Intelligence Community, like intelligence organizations worldwide, uses encryption to protect sensitive information from disclosure and modification, and also seeks to decrypt encrypted information that it collects as part of its mission. In 2020, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence requested that the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine conduct a study to explore the future of encryption over the next 10 to 20 years. The study was to explore technical and non-technical drivers that would affect the viability of the community’s use of encryption to protect information and the challenges of defeating adversaries’ encryption and to produce a set of scenarios that would illustrate possible futures in which the Intelligence Community would have to operate.
The National Academies established the Committee on the Future of Encryption to conduct the study. The full statement of task for the committee is shown in Appendix A. The biographies of the committee members that authored this report are shown in Appendix B.
Committee members included academics, industrial researchers, and engineering practitioners in cryptography and computer science as well as attorneys and policy and intelligence professionals. They brought great expertise in the technology of encryption, its applications and integration into information systems and networks, and the policies and operations of government agencies that both use and seek to defeat encryption. Because of the constraints posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, the committee was unable to meet in person and held virtual meetings biweekly from September 2020 to September 2021.
The committee operated under the auspices of the National Academies’ Intelligence Community Studies Board and is grateful for the able assistance of Caryn A. Leslie, Marguerite Schneider, and Lynette Millett of the National Academies’ staff.
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