Key escrow
termcryptographygovernance & risk
Any arrangement in which a copy of a decryption key is held by a third party so encrypted material can be recovered without the owner's cooperation - proposed for law enforcement, and used legitimately inside organisations for recovering data when an employee leaves.
The two uses are not the same problem. Corporate escrow has a bounded scope, a known custodian and an auditable process; national escrow proposes a repository of keys to everyone's communications, which is a target of unmatched value and a single point of catastrophic failure. The consensus position among cryptographers, argued since Clipper and restated in the Keys Under Doormats papers, is that exceptional-access systems add complexity and attack surface faster than they add safety.
Also known as: escrowed encryption, exceptional access, lawful access, golden key