Bernstein Back in Court 140
William Tanksley send us the story that Bernstein, who's case against the United States resulted in a three judge panel over-turning the US laws regarding exportation of cryptography software. At the request of the DOJ, a full Court of Appeals will rehear the case. Here's to hoping that the full court follows the advice of the panel.
Comment removed (Score:3)
Re:... (Score:1)
Re:Are Crypto Laws Really that Big of a Deal? (Score:1)
The notion that codebreaking was the "only"
factor was something that I wanted to object to
very strongly. However, having just finished reading Cryptonomicon I understand now why that belief is making the rounds. Stephenson did a fine job of using factual matter to immerse a reader in a fictional plot. Bravo.
Look At Yourself (Score:1)
I do NOT think so.
Guns kill people. Encryption does not.
A U.S. citizen does NOT have to worry that another U.S. citizen with encryption can kill them.
The same does NOT apply to guns.
Once Again, Society/Government Can Go Pound Sand (Score:3)
As I mentioned earlier, data sitting around on your hard drive is harmful to no one, so why does the society at large need to look at it? Putting data on one's hard drive beyond the purview of society stands as a check for the individual against society at large. I didn't touch upon freedom of speech with respect to cryptography, which I will do now.
Freedom of speech isn't perfect. For example, I can't send out company secrets to a competitor. Where does cryptography fit in? While cryptography may be used in the capacity of exchanging trade secrets, it doesn't address the fact that sooner or later the competing company is going to release a product based on those services, and enough evidence will be available to track down those resposible, cryptography or not.
In spite of the government's paranoia, cryptography, as used in criminal activities, is really only a small element. For every "actual" crime (read: not thought crimes) there will be plenty of physical evidence for forensic wizards to ascertain not only the identity of the suspects but also the last time they wet their beds.
In a nutshell, an individual's ability to deploy encryption is more important than the off chance that some real crime goes unsolved due to lack of other evidence.
Re:U.S. Government headed the wrong way (Score:4)
By the way, this government was put into power by the CIA under the instructions of R. Nixon.
The price of freedom is eternal vigilance. If you don't like what the government is doing let you elected representatives know about it. Support organizations like the ACLU. Watch the voting record of the people you elect. The people on
Last year I worked for a congressional campaign to unseat a radical conservative who had voted for 8 constitutional amendments during his term. These amendments included a ban on flag buring, a ban on abortion even if cases of rape incest or if the mother's life was threatened, and a override on the school prayer issue. In my opinion this was a totally outrageous assault on the fundamental rights of all Americans.
DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOUR CONGRESSMAN IS VOTING FOR?? Do you check his voting record??? DO you let him know about issues like the crypto problem?
Re:The DoJ's inforcment of crypto laws is treason. (Score:1)
The U.S. government has the bizarre idea that its laws and jurisdiction apply to any U.S. citizen in the known universe.
Re:... (Score:3)
They can simply subdue you if you refuse the warrant - but what are they gonna do to your computer? Inject it with truth serum? Ha! Good luck. It'll be a long, long time before the government can crack the security I have available at my fingertips right now.
Personally, I've given up on law enforcement - they've made too many mistakes for me to trust them to "serve and protect" anymore. I have decided that I will not cooperate with government or law in any fashion until they can prove (to MY satisfaction) their motives and intent. They're simply too untrustworthy - I would trust a bum on a street corner more readily than our so-called justice system.
It's a sad state of affairs - and the only long-term solution I can see is to return the power to the average citizen, rather than allow a corrupt few to share it amongst themselves. We need to bring back the right to bear arms, we need to create a public-review (NOT peer review) system that officers are subject to, and we need them to be tried for their crimes. In short, we need accountability. And privacy would be nice too.
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Re:The DoJ's inforcment of crypto laws is treason. (Score:1)
Re:U.S. Government headed the wrong way (Score:1)
As far as I am concerned this is a gross abuse of power on the part of the mayor, indistinguishable from any other attempt to repress free speach. What is even worse is that the only reason it is being done is to pander to a certain segment of the voters in anticipation of running for the senate.
Dammit my family has been in North America since 1626. My forefathers names are on the Declaration of Independence at the bottom next to John Hancock and Thomas Jefferson. Thet did not go to war to defend the constitution 23 times to put some tinhorn idiot like Gulliani in power to tell me what is offensive or not. I THINK I CAN MAKE UP MY OWN MIND ABOUT THAT, Thank You.
If you think this is about paying or not paying for a painting, you are WRONG. This is about government interfering with a cultural institution (the Brooklyn Museum) which has a long and respected history IN ORDER TO DO ONE THING, get your name in the paper.
Anyone who votes for Gulliani after this.....
Re:... (Score:2)
Imagine if one in ten people crossing the mexican border decided to put little baggies of sugar in their car. Can you imagine the overhead required to seperate the 'fakes' from the real mccoy? It'd be astronomical! If only 1:1000 people actually transported drugs across the boarder, that would mean that only 1% of the people they searched would actually yield *real* drugs. The other 99% is a waste, so you increase the cost per search DRAMATICALLY. You get the idea - and if they decide to outlaw sugar-exportation out of the country, that's gonna piss off alot of sugar businesses. Or oregano exporters for that matter. :)
My point here is that if you make it sufficiently difficult to distinguish the real from the fake... a simple cost-benefit analysis yields that it is an ineffective way to prevent the problem. In effect, simply keep raising the stakes until they can no longer justify the expenditures being made to catch the few 'real' crypto users. Imagine if 30% of your tax dollars went to catch ~130 crypto users each year. Would you stand for it? Hell no!
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Re:...Haa Haa P0rN anyone? (Score:1)
Moderation Offtopic???? (Score:1)
"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
The artifical line between speech and information (Score:3)
Victory in the crypto battle can not, and will not, come through traditional law.
However, the more frightening issue here is what this court is actually supposed to decide, namely, what is speech? Current human rights of free speech come from an age when speech WAS information, and information WAS speech. But, because technology has evolved to the point where most communication is machine to machine, we have (thanks to our unenlightened leadership) gotten a double standard where some information produced by humans is speech, and some is not.
So now They are trying to decide whether the form of information we call source code should be protected as speech. To those of us whose thoughts are often recorded as source code rather than speech or text, the fact that this should ever be in doubt about this seems horribly prejudice. I wonder if a single of the judges in that court has ever written a line of code or has ANY insight on the amount of creativity inherant to programming.
Actually I don't wonder. I'm pretty sure I know the answer.
And of course it goes further. If source code is speech, tell me why machine code is not? Is it because its doubtful that I be able to find any meaning in machine code myself? Then exactly what are the standards by which information attains "meaning" enough to be speech? Could I have them on paper so I know for the future?
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Are Crypto Laws Really that Big of a Deal? (Score:1)
Crypto Laws Suck (Score:1)
Hopefully, however, this ruling won't be repealed, and will stand. I'd love that.
Of course, it looks like that day will be the day that the NSA releases its charter to the general public.
Re:Are Crypto Laws Really that Big of a Deal? (Score:2)
The problem with these laws is that they assume that nobody else in the whole world could create good crypto stuff. I could almost understand a law that said "if its not available anywhere else in the world at this bit-level (or something like that), then you can't export it", but that's not the case these days.
Instead we're forced to use older (easily crackable) algorithms in software distributions because we don't want to offend Big Brother^W^Wthe NSA.
Crypto laws are pointless (Score:1)
Call me stupid but I just don't understand these laws.
... (Score:3)
Crypto is outlawed. Given the current state of law enforcement, I don't really think we have anything to worry about - they can't even keep track of the script kiddies right now. Later on, provided they do get their act together, anybody wishing to practice civil disobedience can send "look-alike" PGP messages. Just cat the output of /dev/urandom to uuencode, strip off some of the header and footer info, and put "-- BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE --" at the top of yours. Looks authentic.. but it isn't crypto.
Here's the other problem with outlawing crypto - do 'ya think the DoJ is gonna convince the 230 some odd countries around the world to agree with them and do the same? Not likely. So all you need to do is route network traffic through one of the countries that DOES allow crypto.
Let's assume now they DO allow crypto. US companies rejoyce, e-commerce in this country gets a shot in the arm, and the stock market people are happy. Do 'ya think the DoJ is stupid enough not to realize they're gonna piss off *ALOT* of companies and investors by outlawing cryptography? Yeah.. my thoughts exactly.
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This seens like a weird case to win on. (Score:1)
On the other hand I'm all in favor of anything that loosens our crypto export laws.
Again with the grammar... (Score:1)
William Tanksley sends us a story that Bernstein, who's case against the United States resulted in a three judge panel over-turning the US laws regarding exportation of cryptography software.
umm, that Bernstein what? shouldn't write posts early on a Saturday morning?
What with Dvorak being as fast as dvorak and what's your favorite 'protocol,' it looks like proffreading doesn't fall under the umbrella of 'stuff that matters.'
... (Score:4)
Foo Blargle Me Noitzen!
What did I just say? It could have been non-sense... or it could have been a one-time cipher I'm using between me and a friend of mine to tell him I want his mp3 collection.
If you outlaw crypto.. the crypto experts will simply design a new system that doesn't *look* like crypto. Steganography(sp?) anyone? No officer, that REALLY IS a jpeg of pamela lee I posted to my friend... it REALLY DOESN'T contain the nuke codes for all the missle installations in North Dakota. :^)
The way I see it - this'll turn into another 'war on drugs' - with the only losers being the common citizen. We'll lose what (very little) civil rights we have remaining.. and will have gained nothing for it.
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Outside the Empire (Score:1)
Re:Leaks? (Score:1)
Re:Perhaps you could.. (Score:1)
His grammar is OK.
A bit more on topic: what other cases exist
which could overthrow current encryption laws?
It seems that neither president nor congress
will get rid of encryption restrictions, so
we are left with the third branch of government
to protect our free speech. So what other cases
are in the ACLU's (or EFF's or whoever's)
pipeline?
It's actually not a rhetorical question (Score:1)
Ultimately, if the general citizenry becomes informed and active, the government gets an overhaul (and slowly so, since so much of the government is appointed/elected indirectly); until that remote condition is met, no progress will be made. That possibility becomes even more remote when you start to account for things like all the gerrymandering with the districts (the supreme court has held that it is a proper constitutional purpose for drawing districts to help incumbants remain in power).
Yes I do... (Score:1)
Re:U.S. Government headed the wrong way (Score:2)
Perhaps you don't know much about New York City, but mr. Guliani hasn't been that friendly toward freedom (I'll take your car away and never give it back if you get caught drunk driving as one example).
Organized religion doesn't care about freedom in general. I don't even think most major religions support the "freedom of religion" clause. But that's their right under the first admendment, and they can protest all they like. The catholic church is not a government institution and therefore cannot be held up to the standards of the constitution, only protected by it.
Now, you say our freedom is clearly and presently dangered. Freedom is ALWAYS endangered. The price for freedom is eternal vigilance. You're lucky you have organizations like the ACLU watching the back you're too secure to watch yourself (not you specifically - the general public).
Politicians can make people feel better by making them more secure. People don't care about freedom when they're scared of crime, or terrorism, or economic collapse. They want to be secure, and politicians exploit that to its fullest. Freedom and security clash head on. They can't co-exist efficiently, if at all. Why do you think "for the children" is so effective???
No one will care about freedom until it's gone. We're lucky here on the 'net, because we are so free. And we're much more vigilant, because we can see more clearly whenever out government infringes on our freedoms.
The ban on the export of strong crypto is only one of the many many things our government is doing to make its people feel secure. Do you feel secure without crypto? I sure don't. But the 80% of americans who either don't have the net, don't use it for anything but porn&cnn, or don't even know what crypto is.. they feel pretty damn secure. Do you think freedom matters in politics? It only matters in law. Unfortunately, even law is sometimes corrupted by political influence.
So if you, any of you, are so upset that the government is trying to censor you and take away all your basic necessary freedoms, why don't you head off and take a gander at www.aclu.org and perhaps donate some money? Or even better, write your representatives every chance you get. Or Head on down to washington and lobby for freedom.
We're not in the real world folks, this is
anyway, sorry for the rant.
Re:... (Score:1)
anything they think might be evidence. UK style
without-a-subpoena police powers are already doing
the rounds through the legislature.
Re: clarification (Score:1)
It doesn't say anything about the content of encrypted communications.
Re:Leaks? (Score:2)
"An EFF-sponsored lawsuit by Professor Daniel Bernstein to determine whether the Professor has the right to teach about cryptography, and collaborate with his peers around the world. A major point is whether he can publish source code that foreigners might be able to access, or speak it directly to individual who might be foreign. The case rests on established First Amendment law and relies on the fact that computer source code is human-to-human communication protected by the First Amendment (in addition to anything else it might be useful for.)"
Re:Once Again, Society/Government Can Go Pound San (Score:2)
By criminalizing the exporting of crypto, or providing it to foreign nationals, the Gov't gets authority to open investigations that it might not be able to touch otherwise. That is, if a Mr. X is intriguing some Three Letter Agencies (TLAs), but is being slick about it, crypto might be the only legal just cause for investigation. Remember that a certain Mr. Capone was jailed for tax evasion, and that numerous drug busts have come about because of traffic violations incurred when a courier panics upon seeing a cop. If most traffic becomes (legally) encrypted, then there's a lot less to even invite suspicion, let alone justify, say, a search warrant.
It can also serve as an opening for retribution via selective prosecution. Those who openly thumb their noses at the Gov't and, say, deliberately defy the law are thus exposing themselves to be squished.
Lastly, it increases public suspicion of crypto itself and those who uses it, thus discouraging its adoption en masse. Crypto is arguably inconvenient for, say, counterintelligence; the TLAs already threw fits about optical cabling in the telecommunications networks, at one point going as far as to request that the networks switch back to copper -- should tapping and data interception become impractical, then one of the best tools versus RICO offenders, phreakers, and so forth is lost.
It doesn't necessarily *all* have to do with the reasons they claim, but to a degree some of their reasons aren't completely bogus.
Re:Outside the Empire (Score:2)
Re:U.S. Government headed the wrong way (Score:2)
Re:This is the qmail author (Score:2)
Here [lawnewsnetwork.com] is a good story about the nature of the remand. It basically says that the Appeal court agreed to an En Banc hearing to evaluate the merits of Bernstein in light of the new BXA regulations on crypto. However, since this case was about speach, my prediction is that 9th Circuit will uphold the panel's decision. Requiring a 'license' to speak is hardly different under 1st Amend jurisprudence than disallowing it. I expect the BXA to be embarrassed again.
Re:Are Crypto Laws Really that Big of a Deal? (Score:2)
Cryptography first began to be a major force in its own right during the Second World War. Since then it has moved from the realm of secret mathematicians working for military leaders to the mainstream. My mother (who just figured out how to turn on the computer by herself last week) recently ordered a hard-to-find book online, using the cryptographic capabilities of Netscape. Cryptography is also now an established field of mathematics, with several journals in many different countries.
We can only expect these trends to continue. While most criminals probably still rely on clandestine meetings for secrecy, we must expect that as strong cryptography becomes widely available the criminal element will exploit it. Why is this a problem? Because it makes it much harder to prosecute crimes. Convicting people who have broken the law requires evidence. With strong cryptography widely available, it would be much harder to gather evidence.
How different would the Microsoft anti-trust trial have been without any of the internal Microsoft documents? If strong cryptography were routinely used for everything, the Microsoft trial would have been a completely different affair.
The government realizes that cryptography is inevitable. They are just trying to slow down its adoption any way they can. It is going to take a long time for the judiciary system to cope with the age of encryption. We all want to live in a secure world. The NSA and related agencies are trying to achieve this by delaying widespread adoption of strong cryptography. This is not a bad thing, unless it infringes on the rights of the individual.
There's the catch. At the deepest level, cryptography is mathematics. And mathematics is ideas. The basic idea behind the Rivest-Shamir-Adleman algorithm (RSA) can be explained in a paragraph or two. There is no way for the government to control ideas like these, short of becoming an Orwellian nightmare. So the government has chosen to attempt to control the implementation of these ideas.
Source code lies somewhere in the broad spectrum of idea and implementation. It seems obvious that object code is an implementation, and pseudo-code expresses an idea. But what about actual source code? Suppose you download the latest ThingGummy.src.tgz package, compile it and then execute it to get the latest features of ThingGummy 2.0. You are not particularly interested in the idea of ThingGummy, but in the implementation. But maybe the new feature is something you have been thinking about adding to your own code, so you get the source and figure out how they added the new feature. Then the source code is being used to transmit an idea.
I think that source code itself is a representation of an idea. I find pseudo-C code easier to understand than pure English pseudo-code. But packaging all the source code (not just the interesting parts) and a Makefile together into one package seems more like an implementation to me. If I were to publish a strong-cryptography algorithm from the US on the Web, I would only publish the source code dealing with the actual encryption/decryption. I believe that would fall under the First Amendment. It really would not be any different than publishing pseudo-code in a mathematics journal.
I do not necessarily trust the NSA. I just don't think a world with widely available strong cryptography would necessarily be the best of all possible worlds. As it is now, the security-conscious are not denied access to strong cryptography. And the government is not trying to restrict the flow of ideas about cryptography, only implementations. That's good enough for me.
-Nathan
Re:It's actually not a rhetorical question (Score:1)
This is absolutely incorrect. The 17th Amendment is part of the Constitution, and hence cannot be unconstitutional. Your argument is like saying that the 12th amendment is unconstitutional because Article II states that the vice-president should be the runner-up in presidential elections.
The 17th Amendemnt amends any terms the Articles and previous amendments that may be inconsistent with the amendment.
Universal crypto vs. Terminator/Matrix/Borg (Score:2)
While it may not be tomorrow or the day after, we are going to be surrounded by AI machinery in due course. Part of that is going to be under our control, even within us, but most is going to be all-pervasive within the environment in which we live. The danger of distributed AI systems integrating into a whole and in self-defense taking a dislike to the rest is real.
We need universal crypto as a safeguard against that. Without secure communications, any dissent has no chance at all.
Re:Are Crypto Laws Really that Big of a Deal? (Score:1)
was because they had cracked their codes and knew most of what Germany was doing. "
You can't imagine that brute force, high morale, and air superiority might have played any part in the allied victory?
Pointless? Depends on the agenda (Score:2)
Now then, do you really think that the people in the NSA, CIA, FBI, etc, are utterly *stupid*? The likelihood of that is so close to zero as to be really zero. They are probably the most intelligent people in the government apparatus, full stop.
So, do you think that they really want to enact crypto laws for reasons that anyone with a single ticking brain cell knows are pointless?
My predictions (Score:2)
Obviously the gov can't stop everyone from using crypto. They know that. They just want to stop most people from using crypto. And they've done that very effectively so far.
Only about one percent of email traffic is encrypted. Most people don't even know that web browsers come in "domestic" and "international" flavours, let alone what version they have. Cellphone traffic is encrypted weakly, if at all. Landline telephone traffic is almost completely unencrypted.
To accomplish this the feds have done everything they can to discourage the free flow of cryptographic software. The export controls have been one of the most effective means for this, as it gives them a sort of veto over what products can be sold. In theory they can only stop export, but in practice most companies want to sell one product globally, and that means government-approved crypto. The feds are going to do everything they can to maintain this status quo.
Bernstein argued that source code was speech because it expresses an intellectual construct. The gov argued that it was a functional device because it can be compiled to perform a function. They're both right of course, and it's up to the courts to decide how to resolve the issue.
It's conceivable that the government will manage to convince the court to sit on the fence. I'm no legal expert, but this is what I think will happen:
-- The courts will rule that source code is speech if it is intended to express an idea, but a functional export-restricted device if it is just intended to be compiled into object code. The intent will be the deciding factor.
-- The feds will interpret the ruling as meaning that you have to prove that your source code will not be compiled by some foreigner. If you can't accomplish this impossible task, they won't let you export the software. Anyone who exports unapproved crypto will face the possibility of criminal charges for violating export regs. Even if such charges are totally bogus, it would mean a long and drawn-out court battle. Most hardware and software companies won't take the chance. This type of government FUD has worked very well to date.
-- End result: Bernstein can export the Snuffle source, but the export restrictions remain fundamentally unchanged.
Check out this link [la.ca.us] for some interesting wiretap info.
Re:Have to look at the law... (Score:1)
It's not the government's intent to prevent foreigners from obtaining strong crypto. Their intent is to prevent strong crypto from becoming commonplace. They realize that for crypto to work, it has to be interoperable. Since most people in the U.S. obtain their software from U.S. sources, you can effectively cut out the majority of the U.S. population from the equation by restricting U.S. software suppliers...which is exactly what they have done.
However, it appears they didn't anticipate freely available software. Say I make a living selling my own Linux distribution, for instance. I want to include cryptographically strong packages in my distribution but I don't want to violate U.S. export laws. So I create two versions of my CD: one with the strong crypto and one without. I can send the latter anywhere I want but I always send the former to anyone in the U.S. And I make it publicly known which strong crypto packages are on the U.S. distribution. Since I make my distribution itself freely redistributable, someone in Europe can easily recreate my U.S. version and sell it in Europe. I might even encourage that. End result: almost everyone who buys my distribution gets the same strong crypto packages.
Another way around it is to set up the installation process so that it automatically downloads the strong crypto from outside the U.S. This won't work very well right now but it will once most people have a permanent net connection.
Interesting how freedom to speak privately to one another may be one of the things that Free (libre) software ultimately gives us...
They're not a big deal ... for the terrorists (Score:2)
It's the ordinary citizen that is affected by crypto laws, not anyone else. Terrorists, drug syndicates and all the other organized baddies aren't affected at all. They have all the cryptographic (and other) weapons they need, thank you, because they don't operate within the framework of law so it's no more than an irritation to them.
In conntrast, the law-abiding citizen is affected 100%, so it *is* a big deal for him or her.
Re:... (Score:1)
Free speech is not a right to subsidy (Score:1)
If you don't like the GPL or the BSD licenses, are you obligated to work on a project that offends you? Are you obligated to fund it?
The encryption debate is a debate over whether government has the right to forbid. The debate over the Brooklyn Art Museum is whether the state is obligated to fund.
When we mix up the distinctions, we end up looking like we support blasphemy which is the *wrong* way to go about building majority coalitions. Take a look at Jesse Ventura for a how to self-implode this way. Worked properly, churches are an ally because they have a great deal of experience on being suppressed in various countries.
I belong to a branch of the Catholic Church (romanian byzantine catholic http://www.greek-catholic.ro) that was banned by the Communist imperialists in Romania. You betcha that they used secret messages/encryption and every trick in the book to keep the church alive during 1948-1998 when it was legalized again. If things went bad there again, I'm sure that PGP and other cryptographic tools would be critical in the fight and the church knows it.
TML
Re:It's actually not a rhetorical question (Score:1)
If the amendment is ratified, it becomes part of the Constitution provided it does not:
- Amend Article 1, Section 9, Clauses 1 or 4 prior to 1808. These are, respectively, a prohibition on Congress forbidding states from admitting certain people into their borders (the intent was to keep Congress from abolishing slavery), and a prohibition on direct taxes on the people.
- Remove the "equal suffrage in the Senate" of a state without that state's consent. The 17th amendment leaves each state with two senators, so this provision has not been violated.
So, the 17th Amendment was Constitutional to insert into the Constitution. Now that it's part of the Constitution, it can't be repugnant to the Constitution - that would be saying that the Constitution is repugnant to itself, an obviously impossible condition.Both of these clauses have since basically been obliterated; Clause 1 is still essentially in effect but its effect has been totally gutted by the 13th-15th Amendments. Clause 4 was amended by the 16th Amendment in 1913.
IANAL.
Re:Free speech is not a right to subsidy (Score:2)
This sort of thing has already been ruled to be unconstitutional in numerous cases, and I am sure that the lawsuit being brought by the Boroklyn Museum will bear this principle out.
Re:Your post is more revolutionary than you think (Score:2)
If you think that violence could be used, in any form, to upset the current order you are insane. Our current regimes are based on violence, we can overthrow them left and right and keep replacing them with ones resting on the same pillars of authority, abuse, and violence and it wouldn't matter one way or the other.
Our governments are, however, digging their own graves in soliciting the coming of the informed society (to the extent that they are). Not because of revolution, but because it makes them redundant. There are people who realize this, and know that cryptology is the very backbone of the world that will supercede them. And cryptology has proved a gratefully simple target of attack.
Hitting someone with a club might be a good idea if they are trying to take your lunch: but we are, hopefully, past that. The solution that transcends conventional law to which I reffered is not violence, today's law IS violence, but the very information society which they fear.
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Re:Are Crypto Laws Really that Big of a Deal? (Score:1)
I realize that you were only playing Devil's advocate, but there are a few problems with your logic.
The ability to intercept communications does not figure into the majority of criminal prosecutions. If you kill somebody, it doesn't matter if the government can't hear your phone call telling someone about the murder you just committed -- there's still a dead body sitting somewhere with your clothing fibres clinging to it, and a bullet traced to your gun sitting inside its skull.
Indeed, telephone wiretapping -- which the government says is equivalent to law enforcement cracking crypto -- is almost never used to combat serious crimes. According to the ACLU White Paper [aclu.org] on the subject, "in the past eleven years, fewer than 0.2 percent of all law enforcement wiretap requests were made in the investigation of bombings, arson or firearms" while 83 percent of "...wiretaps and other forms of surveillance have been authorized in connection with vice crimes, like gambling and drug offenses..."
This is the /. equivalent of the "Save the children!" argument: Point out one case that hits at most readers emotionally, and the whole argument is accepted without much thought.
I personally don't think that there should be any antitrust laws, or any case against Micro$not. I hate their products as much as anybody here does, but I'm a libertarian; they have a right to do what they want, and I have the right to do what I want. Just as I have a right to complain about Windows and/or switch to something else and/or create a competing product, they have a right to be assholes.
And in the end, you're forgetting about the three key points in favor of widely implimented strong cryptography: Privacy, corruption, and the criminals themselves. For the first, it doesn't matter if I'm not doing anything illegal; for my part, I don't want the anybody unintended, government or otherwise, having the ability to read my secret love letters, diaries, hopes and dreams, &c. The argument that those who don't commit crimes shouldn't care if they're watched doesn't hold up in my view; after all, in that case, why should I care if police can routinely come into my bedroom and check to see what I have in my bedside drawer, my dresser, and my closet?
Then, enter the issue of corruption. How likely is it that my weakly encrypted communications will only be cracked by the government under warrant?
And lastly, everybody seems to be forgetting that if the government can break it easily, so can criminals. I don't want Joe Ex-Con stealing my credit card number. I don't want Tom Voyeur reading my correspondance with my SO. I don't want Mr. Sleazy Dishonest Corporate Head Honcho finding out my business plans and potentially patentable ideas that I at least want credit for. And I want to be able to communicate those things with people that I want to, even if they happen to reside outside the United States. Every day I thank Phil Zimmerman for distributing PGP so that anybody could get it anywhere.
Restrictions on strong crypto increase crime far more than they prevent it.
These points should strongly outweigh any reason to restrict strong crypto. Really, would you trade all of the money in your bank account, your privacy, and your greatest ideas for the ability to litigate against Microsoft?
-- Rene --
Firearms and Encryption (Score:1)
As for Political Speach, that depends. Are you talking about how you can't commit lible against your policial oponents? Or maybe the limitations on how much you can donate to a particular canidate? Or that you can't campaign within some number of feet from voting locations? Maybe some other kind of Political Speech I'm forgetting? Personaly, I don't find any of those restrictive - if anything they limit how much someone else can restrict your speach.
Now, Cryptography doesn't limit someone else's speach, and it doesn't directly pose any threat. However, it isn't particularly expresive either. Hence, consitutional arguments, unless you want to argue the merits of the Elastic Cluase, are fairly irelvent.
--
Buy my new book "Reading Bits and Peices: The Secret to getting your way out of the Consitution"!
Letters to Phil (Score:1)
I already unloaded most of my comments on the subject in a hasty reply [slashdot.org], but I thought I should point this out.
Over the past few years, human rights workers in extremely dangerous environments have written various letters [nai.com] to Phil Zimmerman. Not only do those letters thank him, but they essentially say that PGP -- and its availability abroad -- has saved lives. Strong PGP encryption in foreign countries has sometimes been the only barrier preventing perfectly good people from being murdered, raped, and otherwise hassled rather badly.
Now, of course, some of those human rights workers are indeed dissidents against their governments. Where they are, they break the law; they subvert the area governments' abilities to slaughter and suppress at will. But that's another discussion altogether.
-- Rene --
First Amendment (Score:1)
-russ
Re:The DoJ's inforcment of crypto laws is treason. (Score:2)
Debian has this. Just point apt to http://non-us.debian.org/debian/ and there you have apache-ssl, modssl, openssl, ssh, you name it. Hosted in the Netherlands.
Re:... (Score:2)
The point is to hinder the widespread deployment of cryptography. If crypto were outlawed (or heavily restricted as it is now), legitimate corporations can't release cryptographic software. This is good enough for the government since it means that most people won't be able to use cryptography since they don't have the know how to code it up themselves, or scour the net for some hacked up crypto software (and they probably wouldn't know how to use it even if they could find it).
This is good for the government from a law enforcement stand point since if they're looking for encrypted communications by criminals, they only have to sift through a fairly small number of encrypted messages. Or as other posters have suggested, the government's objective may just be to spy on the general populace.
Re:Perhaps you could.. (Score:1)
--
Re:U.S. Government headed the wrong way (Score:1)
That is a really good idea.. (Score:1)
SegFS [cam.ac.uk] for Linux implements this on top of an ext2 and I was proposing a related file system for PDAs in my first post, but I had not considered using it in a communication protocoll.. which is a briliant idea.
We could set up a simple email network based on the pgp key servers and a modified version of pgp (add support for multilayer encryption). You would run a daemon on your system to find people from the pgp key server who supported this network and randomly send them encrypted mail. Now, if you ever had anything real to send to anyone you would just use a higher stenography/encryption level (which no one can prove exists).
The only problem with this is that your recepiant must know the higher level exists so they must reveal it's existance to there computer (which could be bugged) every time they want to check for a higher level in a message. It also creates a lot of spam, but I suppose your mail reader could automatically determine the message was meningless once you gave it your key's password.
Another really great thing about this system is that it makes traffic analysis difficult as well. Traffic analysis can also be fought by making everyone a non-anonymous remailer.
Internet chat programms could also use the same ideas. Quesion: Do encrypted IRC clients exist? It would seem pretty simple to implement. The clients would automatically exchange public keys with everyone on the channel.. shit you could even generate a new public key every few min. Plus, the client could participate in random other conversations without the trash message actually rolling accrostthe channel. If you were really serious about security many conversation channels could be routed into one IRC channel to hide who was talking to who (which would be great for people in places like China). Shit, with the multilayer stuff you could have it que up messages and send a higher layer message on top of a lower layer message.. so the cops could participate in an encrypted conversation and still have no idea about what is really going on.
If this were 1776, I and 200 of my closest friends would be crouched with muskets taking pot shots at someone in a red coat over nonsense like this.
Goverments never give people fredoms.. they mearly discover too late that they have accedentally given them freedoms. This is what happened with the American revolution and it is what has happened with the internet, but unfortunatly realitivly few people have experenced the Internet freedoms. Hopefully, this will happen when we make a permenant Mars/Moon collony or soemtihng too. Send up lots of non-religious responcible pseudo-libertarians and discover that they don't need much of a government. They will be the ones who laugh at the U.S. for not having a constitution which is good enough to keep stupid laws from being passed.
The flip side to all this optimisim is that people find it hard to comprehend and fight for a freedom they have never experenced. If there were a way to let people exprence freedoms via communication then I suspect the human race would evolve (cognitivly) much faster. Hmm.. Maybe we could publish lots of children's books about human rights to give to people in repressive countries? Interesting experement.
Jeff
But it does deny equal suffrage in the Senate (Score:1)
This is not just only of forensic importance. If congress proposes legislation that restricts states directly (as in Garcia v. San Antonio Metropolitan Transit Authority), the states no longer have any say in the matter. The only check upon federal abrogation of the principles of federalism is in the Supreme Court, which is a federally appointed and chartered body.
Re:The DoJ's inforcment of crypto laws is treason. (Score:1)
Partially incorrect.
A US citizen can expatriate (renounce your citizenship) AND remain an American. You don't have to leave the country. Here is the 14th amendment:
BILL OF RIGHTS
ARTICLE XIV
Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.
I personally know of Americans who have expatriated and become a State Citizen, so thats how I know it works.
If you research Sovereign State Citizen you can verify this for yourself.
> The U.S. government has the bizarre idea that its laws and jurisdiction apply to any U.S. citizen in the known universe
U.S. jurisdiction DOES apply to _U.S._ citizens anywhere they live. You might want to pick up Black's Law Dictionary and look up citizenship, jurisdiction, and United States (which has many meanings!)
Cheers
The goverment isn't completely ignorant (Score:2)
A speaker in Gene Spafford's security seminar [purdue.edu] suggested that most higher-ups in the US Government do realize that the current crypto policy is silly/restrictive/huriting part of the economy. However, they only know how to protect their interests under the current rules, so they're slowly moving from silly to sane. They need time to figure out new policies, etc...
Sounds logical to me...
Re:The DoJ's inforcment of crypto laws is treason. (Score:2)
I wish I could remember the name of the "multiple-password" encryption system I read about (you encrypt multiple plaintexts with multiple passwords into one ciphertext - each password unlocks a different plaintext; under duress you choose which password(s) to give away... coupled with steganography this is very powerful).
I believe that if it actually comes down to "we can get your keys" that we should institute a network where we transmit encrypted data and random data regularly to random members of the network. When you wish to send a real encrypted message, make sure the person is on the network (have them join) and send it, otherwise you're sending random data to people on the network. They want the data? Make them figure out what's real and what's garbage (with the majority likely garbage), and make them do the work of decrypting (coupled with a system like the multiple-password system like above and you've got a real dilemma for Mr. Orwellian Protector & Server). Essentially there is always a good volume of traffic with high entropy going between people on the network. It could be adjusted so that the odds of finding an encrypted message are made arbitrarily low.
This diminishes greatly the possibility of snooping traffic (even if you can decrypt pretty quickly there's too much to decrypt even a fraction of it), and if you use a multiple-password system, etc, they don't know whether or not to keep looking or not. If they know everyone on the network is likely doing this then it is depressingly hard to know whether they've got someone's data or not.
[...thinking.... steaming...uh-oh...] Know what? I'm personally sick of this shit. The government has NO RIGHT to our keys, to inhibit crypto, to sacrifice our freedoms and privacy under the guise of protecting us ("we're just doing this for your own good"). It is unfathomable to me that a government full of bureaucrats who must be trained for hours to attempt to discuss a bill/motion/case/law/amendment remotely regarding technical issues has the nerve to try to legislate and control inherently technical matters such as cryptography.
Call me a Libertarian, but I don't need this government to handle terrorist threats by threatening to subpoena my crypto keys, restricting what I can post on my website (this is what the Bernstein case boils down to) -- *especially* when it is freely available on the Internet (which makes no difference as they have no right even if it were not available elsewhere), or trying to legislate what kind of algorithms I can use.
If this were 1776, I and 200 of my closest friends would be crouched with muskets taking pot shots at someone in a red coat over nonsense like this. This discussion should not even have to take place -- the government does not have the right or the power to do this. We are the State (Locke, Rousseau, even Tolstoy understood this) and have allowed the nominal Powers to do this by convincing ourselves that they are powerful enough to be unstoppable. In actuality, Congress, the Judiciary, and the Executive are only the motive end of the Will of the People. We have let them interpret and create a false representation of the People's Will which they have abused at the People's expense (which is, by the way, treason). They have so publicly twisted the common perception of how Government works that we actually believe that We are subject to Their will, and not the reverse (as is actually the case). They have taken advantage of our docility and can do what they will -- but only so long as we let them.
Re:Are Crypto Laws Really that Big of a Deal? (Score:1)
U.S. Government headed the wrong way (Score:1)
Re:... (Score:1)
Why bother? (Score:1)
Re:U.S. Government headed the wrong way (Score:1)
We have a really long way to go before it gets that bad, and I don't think we've started down a slippery slope yet. Calm down and put the assault rifle away. We don't need your militia to save us just yet.
As long as we're still debating using public funding to support pictures of the Virgin Mary smeared with elephant dung, I'm not especially concerned about our freedoms being limited.
Perhaps you could.. (Score:1)
proffreading
I'm not trying to be picky/mean/pick a fight, but, since you mentioned it...
Re:This seens like a weird case to win on. (Score:1)
Analogy (Score:5)
But in both cases, it is completely ineffectual. Let's face it, we are doing as good a job keeping our cryptography methods secret as we are preventing drugs from crossing the border. In both cases, we are going about it the wrong way. In the case of drugs, the government causes an increase in crime, inflates the prices of drugs, and spends billions of dollars while only stopping a small percentage of the actual trafficking. In the war against crypto exportation, yes, the government is keeping our "secrets" from falling into the hands of the world at large, but is it keeping it from those that it claims are the problem?
Do any of us really believe that just because there is no official exportation, that anything on the U.S. market is still secure from high-powered foriegn organizations, be they countries or terrorists? In fact, they are the ones most likely to get whatever the software they want. Hell, if they can smuggle American missiles out of the country from "secure" military bases, how hard is it to steal software?
Once again, the U.S. government is costing the American cryptography industry a phenomenal amount of money by not allowing exportation (even though they do now, this is in the case of the ruling being overturned) while still not keeping the information from the "enemies." It is a backwards approach to the problem.
While it is nice to be moral and an upright country (relatively), the majority of the world is not. Those who want the crypto information can get it, and those who can pay for it can not. Is that really the solution?
Thus, as does the majority of Slashdot, I hope that this ruling stands.
Re:They're not a big deal ... for the terrorists (Score:2)
Quit whining about the poor software companies that have to write two versions of there product, one for here, one for overseas. There's no cost of materials involved, and all the work they do should be completely reusable, so it's only a minimal amount of effort to field US and for-export versions of software.
This is unfortunately a large world with many different countries. Some are nice, some aren't. Yeah, they can make there own crypto software, and why shouldn't they? We don't give them plans ot make nuclear weapons, they have to do the research or espionage themselves.
The moment the government moves to stop the use of strong crypto within the continental united states is the moment i change my tune, but all that's been done is just an effort to keep up with the times. They've changed. Before if you wire tapped a phone, you knew where the reciever was and could do a trace on the caller. Then cell phones came along, so the FBI requested that there be a way for them to triangulate the calls so again, they could know where everyone is.
The moral of this story is quit whining, quit blowing it so completely out of proportion and be happy that you live in the US, rather than say Zimbabwe, Zaire, Russia, China, Columbia, Iraq, etc...
Re:It's actually not a rhetorical question (Score:1)
"All laws which are repugnant to the Constitution are null and void"
Marbury vs. Madison, 5 US (2 Cranch) 137, 174, 176, (1803)
As to whether the 17th amendment is valid or not, that is up to the lawyers to decide.
Cheers
Cisco would be very happy (Score:2)
THEY'RE NOT OUTLAWING CRYPTOGRAPHY!!! They only want to limit it's spread to potential adversaries. The county right now is financially driven. We're a capitalist society, and the new way of doing business is over the internet. If the gov't outlawed strong crypto, just about every business selling goods on the internet would fold relatively quickly.
Amazon and Ebay and Etrade are not crying out about this, which means that this doesn't effect them. If it doesn't affect them, honestly, it doesn't affect us. Unless you live outside the US. If you do, go code your own strong crypto rather than just leeching it from us!
Re:U.S. Government headed the wrong way (Score:1)
Re:Once Again, Society/Government Can Go Pound San (Score:1)
The REASON you can't do that is because more likely then not, you signed a Non-Disclosure Agreement, when you joined the company.
Contracts are stronger then law, as you have noted. Thats what freedom is about, we can contract our rights away. Most people usually do it by signing licenses.
Good post though.
Re:Have to look at the law... (Score:2)
Re:... (Score:1)
Re:Yes I do... (Score:2)
Re:... (Score:1)
I recommend that all of you do the same. If you do happen to have something that you want to keep secret, you encode it, and overwrite the first part of the 10Mb file with the encrypted info.
It is just random bits. Nobody can prove anything else.
Roger.
Re:U.S. Government headed the wrong way (Score:2)
Since then I think that things really haven't changed much, either way, except maybe the fall of the USSR has cut the legs out of a lot of military and covert operations. The CIA is a mere shell of what it used to be.
Your post is more revolutionary than you think (Score:1)
I don't believe that you are correct. I do believe that the political order hasn't gone so far as to preclude a peaceful solution that restores the respect for our God given rights.
When politics fails, violence against the state is legitimate and even required to uphold the rights of man. We may get there someday. I hope to God we never will.
TML
Cui bono? [Who benefits] (Score:1)
The analogy is good. Carry it further--look beyond the stated aims and evaluate the actual effects.
In the case of drugs, the effect of the "war" is an expansion of police powers and a reduction in civil liberties. In the case of the "war" against the export of strong crypto, the effect is the supression of all _domestic_ crypto and a reduction in privacy for all.
But who benefits from these actions? Cash may not be directly involved, but those individuals who like to control others receive gratification. And which occupations are these "controllers" likely to seek in life? I would argue they will be disproportionately present in the judicial, legislative and executive branches of government at all levels.
It is unpopular and illegal for them to achieve their aims directly. With the facades of "fighting drugs" or "fighting terrorism" plus some scaremongering, they do anyways.
-- Robert
Whether these effects are desired by policymakers is a matter of individual judgement.
Re:Free speech is not a right to subsidy (Score:2)
I really feel sorry for people like you. Everything boils down to the almighty buck, and if there is something you don't like the first thing out of your mouth is profanity and a desire to supress it. Your ideas are so inimical to the precepts on which this country was founded that it is scary. And you don't even have the courage to post under a name.
Thank God most New Yorkers have chosen to disagree with you. Polls conducted in NYC show that even amoung Catholics, the Mayor has a support level of only about 30%.
Re:U.S. Government headed the wrong way (Score:2)
The founders of this nation included the Bill or Rights to limit the power of government. This is necessary because populist opinions will often trample individual rights. Elected officials follow the mob. Gulliani's behaviour is a perfect example of this. Your position challenges these limits on goverment power in a VERY dangerous way.
Where does this lead? Do you think that the internment of US citizens of Japanese decent during WWII was right? Do you think that the segregation laws in the south up to the early 60's were right? Certainy these were cases of goverment following popular opinion.
Re:U.S. Government headed the wrong way (Score:1)
As long as we're still debating using public funding to support pictures of the Virgin Mary smeared with elephant dung, I'm not especially concerned about our freedoms being limited.
That's one of the things that concerns me the most. If there's even the slightest question in the mind of anyone as to the appropriateness censoring art... then our freedom is clearly and presently endangered!
Re:Are Crypto Laws Really that Big of a Deal? (Score:3)
The government claims that criminals will use encryption to hide their plans from the poice. Interesting theory, and true in some aspects, but they forget two things:
1) Most criminals don't know how to use encryption. Hell, most people don't know how to use it; encryption software is not known for its ease of use.
2) Those who would use it are going to use it anyway. Most criminals already get their stuff by illegal means; legal ones are too easy to trace (guns are a big example of this, and it's why I don't believe gun control works).
Now, I do find it interesting that even the loosened export restrictions bar the posting of crypto source online. In other words, US citizens still won't be able to work on Open-Source crypto (or any other crypto with even one person on the team who's not in the US, because the only practical way to get the source to that person is via the Net). The government sure knows how to make enemies out of the very people it's trying to court...
Leaks? (Score:2)
I was just wondering what implications current encryption laws have in terms of controlling leaks from within the NSA. They can prosecute a leaker no matter what the law, but they might have a more difficult problem controlling the dissemination of the information after a leak if the information itself was legal. Scenario: NSA employee posts source to a invincible encryption method anonymously. Can they stop the information from spreading?
Re:... (Score:1)
Steganography may solve this problem once and for all however. If there's no way to prove that there's encrypted data, there's not much they can do about it. Not that they won't pass a law against it - it will just be even more unenforcable than current ones are.
I'm reminded of a quote by Socrates - "Do not command what you can not enforce."
This is the qmail author (Score:5)
qmail, ezmlm, and lots of other great software. Anyone who
has read the qmail docs or his webpage [uic.edu]
will know that he places security above anything else, doesn't
mince his words, and doesn't hesitate to be a nonconformist
(eg, running his web site with his own secure anonymous
FTP server, rather than a http server...)
He's probably among the best possible people for this case.
Relaxing crypto export laws (Score:1)
Screw 'em. Take it to the Supreme Court, and have the export law (and attempts at domestic controls) declared unconstitutional.
As several people have pointed out, yes the cat is out of the bag. You can get good crypto from other countries. You can get it all preconfigured on your OpenBSD CD from Theo in Canada. You can get 128-bit Netscape anywhere in the world from Fortify. You can get good SSH from Datafellows in Finland. RSA has shipped some of their development efforts to Australia.
You can print the code in a book, and ship that anywhere but the evil 7 countries. Then, someone can type that in, or scan it. That's how PGP officially got out of the country.
Hey Clinton, Reno, you lose. Why don't give up already?
You're just hurting the US crypto companies, and corporations like the one I work for who want to deploy VPNs and such.
Well, it doesn't hurt me that much... I just have my out-of-country counterparts buy out-of-country and distribute for me.
But hey, the US government is really inconvieniencing me... and it's annoying.
Re:... (Score:3)
Or illegal. It violates the 5th amendment protections of the constitution. Somehow I sincerely doubt that any law enforcement agency has the necessary clout to push through the removal of that amendment.
Let the legal system dance and run to and fro like a chicken with it's head cut off. It won't be too long before the futility of the situation dawns on them. In this respect, think of them as the ominous "Management" - claims credit for the rain, saying that it controls the weather.. but not for the subsequent drought, which it blames on the 'criminal element'.
--
Re:... (Score:2)
Ah, but it IS crypto, that's the problem. Cryptography is taking something that is "clear" and making it something else. UUEncoding is a form of cryptography. Scanning a piece of paper in an OCR and saving it as a password protected MS Word document is crypto. Neither of which is the "toughest" of crypto, and there are certainly pieces of software to "decode" both end-products rather easily, but they are still encrypted. To make my point, I could hand you the binary code from the word document. If you can't read it, guess what? It's a form of encryption (and encapsulation in that particular case, encapsulating it in a wrapper of word-doc crap, but that's here nor there)
It is important that we are careful with our terminology. Cryptography is NOT what the government is after. They're after "tough" encryption.
As soon as we start just throwing the "crypto" word around, we run the risk of confusing the issue because there are many things that are crypto that are also perfectly legal to import and export.
Re:Free speech is not a right to subsidy (Score:2)
Re:Free speech is not a right to subsidy (Score:2)
How can you identify a point of view unless you can figure out if a message is attributable to a specific poster?
and counting a pseudonym as "the courage to post under a name" is absurd
Nonsense. Read what I said. Courage to post under a name means exactly what is says. I didn't say YOUR name, I said A name. A name includes a vast universe of possibilities.
Does subsidy have to be perpetual? (Score:1)
I never favored art subsidy by the government precisely on the grounds that these fights are inevitable. The problem fundamentally is that artists like to tweak the noses of catholics and others who they don't like. That's fine. But they are doing it with the catholic's own money extorted by the government tax man. And that's not right at all. Not every group out there is as defenseless.
In Chicago, they hung up a picture of the late Mayor Harold Washington in his underwear in an unflattering pose. A couple of City Council members personally went down and removed the picture. The picture never went back up and there was no lawsuit.
The vast hypocricy and double standard when it comes to whose ox is being gored is mind boggling.
I saw "Piss Christ". If it wasn't labeled as such, you would just look at a picture and see an interesting lighting effect. The label is there intentionally to offend. If I wasn't paying for it via my tax dollars, I would ignore it as another anti-christian diatribe and move on.
If the lady in the fecal picture in Brooklyn wasn't given the label of the virgin Mary, there are no identifying characteristics that would lead anybody to believe that it was anything else than bad art.
What you seem to be arguing is that withdrawl of funding in the current year is unconstitutional. I don't particularly think this is the case. Let's grant your point for the moment. Does your objection fade if the subsidy is simply no longer renewed next budget year? If so, what's the difference?
TML
Re:Are Crypto Laws Really that Big of a Deal? (Score:1)
nb. These views have all probably been expressed more eloquently by someone else, but that's my to binary digits worth.
The DoJ's inforcment of crypto laws is treason.. (Score:4)
This kind of system would be great, everyone would opnly need a few passwords and there would be much less hacking and fraud (example: all hacking based on social engenering would stop since no one knows a password to anything but the cary they carry), but the gov. would rather indanger US buisnesses and finantial infrastructure then allow people to protect themselves. Can anybody say treason.
Now, it seems that they are willing to throw corperations a bone so long as open source cryptography dosn't spread to fast and the people are still kept in the dark.
Solutions: A good way to fight the U.S. policies is to incurage the development of cryptography in other countries. U.S. citizens who want to work on crypto sould be incuraged to move to less repressive countries and other countries should be incurages to make life easier for crypto development and implementation. Also, we need to make it less profitable for the gov. to keep encryption hardware out of circulation. I think the two big steps here would be installing encryption into all the internet fone programs and writing crypto software for PDAs to allow them so surve as login devices. It would be really cool if one of these PDA-Cellphones would be powerful enough to be turnned into a PGP fone through software.
I think there is also a lot we can do to make it easier to install cryptography on Linux. It would be really nice if some Denbian and RedHat people would maintain cryptography enabled packages with were always up to date and easy to install (replay and people tend to lag behind in versions) and if the post install email to root or whatever would include an explination of how to download and install the replacment packages. It would also be nice if RedHat would have seperate US and international versions of it's CD. Plus, SSH, Apache-SSL, the JavaSSH client, an encrypted digital fone program, and software to use a PDA as a login device would give many people a reason to buy the CD.
Jeff
Re:Have to look at the law... (Score:1)
Re:Are Crypto Laws Really that Big of a Deal? (Score:2)
Let me parse the underbelly of this statement. So there is a US that is apart from its citizens. Who is the US really? Is it the gov't or is it its citizens saying they don't want crypto laws?
Which hierarchy does the constitution support? (Rhetorical question)