From "France Eases Cryptol Restrictions" in TBTF for 1999-01-26,
http://tbtf.com/archive/1999-01-26.html#s06

Human translation of part of a French government announcement [1],
posted to the Cryptography mailing list.

[1] http://www.premier-ministre.gouv.fr/PM/D190199.HTM

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The third legislative initiative concerns cryptography. With
the development of electronic espionage instruments,
cryptography appears as an essential instrument of privacy
protection.

We had, one year ago, made a first step towards
liberalization of cryptographic instruments. At that time I
had announced that we were going to make one further. The
Government has, since then, heard the players, questioned
the experts and consulted its international partners. We
have today become convinced that the legislation of 1996 is
no longer suitable. In fact, it strongly restricts the usage
of cryptography in France, on the other hand, for all that,
without allowing the public powers to fight effectively
against criminal actions of which encryption could
facilitate the dissimulation.

In order to change the orientation of our legislation, the
Government has thus retained the following orientations,
that I have discussed with the President of the Republic:

- To offer a complete freedom of use of cryptography

- To remove the compulsory nature or third-party escrow of
encryption keys

- To supplement the current legal framework by the
introduction of obligations, together with penal sanctions,
concerning the handing-over to the legal authorities, when
they require it, of the cleartext version of encrypted
documents. At the same time, the technical skills of the
public authorities will be significantly improved.

Changing the law will take many months. The Govenment has
decided that the main obstacles holding up the citizens from
protecting the confidentiality of their communications and
the development of electronic commerce be lifted without
waiting. Thus, waiting for the announced legislative
changes, the Government has decided to raise the the the
threshold of cryptology the use of which is free, from 40
bit to 128 bit, considered by the experts a level suitable
to ensure durably a very high security.