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Pakistan Tries To Ban Encryption
An anonymous reader writes "Pakistan has a new Telecoms Law going into effect, which requires widespread monitoring of internet usage. In response, new reports are saying that the country is banning encryption, including VPNs, because it would interfere with the ability of ISPs to monitor internet usage."
...now I just have to get hold of a few Pakistani bank IP addys, set up some sort of listener, and...
Oh, you thought SSL would still be around after this little law gets into effect?
(obviously I'm kidding, at least about wanting to do any such thing. OTOH, there are quite a few folks who probably wouldn't be kidding at all).
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
no more secrets. at all. this time I mean it. now go back to putting your secrets on the internet, in plain text!
The particulars may vary, but the essence is that you try to forbid people to have secrets from you.
Once you see it in this light, the paradoxical futility becomes clear.
They might actually hide the location of Osama Bin Laden....oh, wait.....
...and I thought the US government was clueless.
any bets this gives some idiot in the US Gov't an idea and they add this to the next save the children legislation.
Presumably you've forgotten the Clipper Chip?
Be sure to drink your ovaltine?
They're interested in content rather than b/w utilisation. I suggest you RTFA...no-matter how preposterous it may sound.
Instead of generic encrypted traffic now users will to resort to stenography. Just embed encrypted traffic in otherwise boring video streams and pictures.
I take it no one does any actual work over the internet in Pakistan?! How about banking, stock trades, online purchases? How ass-backwards is this country?
Because after every terrorist exploit, the security agencies make threatening noises about Skype (most favourite) followed by Gmail and then mail in general. How to explain to our dumbos that banning automobiles is no solution to hit-and-run accidents !
Insight into much, Influence over nothing !
Wow, way to make sure your country can never have any outsourcing jobs. No business with a clue would ever set up operations in a country where all traffic has to be open to corporate espionage.
They're going to be in the technological dark ages forever if this persists, vs. following India into the cheap outsourcing market.
Sure, since hardly anyone can read shorthand these days, that should work. I'm not sure how to get it encoded into e-mails & such, though.
It's not encrypted. We're just sending random, meaningless strings to one-another.
Buahahahahahahaaaaaaaaaaaaa.
I would like to point out that it's international telecommunications union regulations that ban encryption on amateur wavelengths, and it is fine as amateur radio is for the purpose of research and learning about radio technology. Not research into encryption systems.
Hell, courtesans were popular in most European courts (including in Italy, right outside the Vatican) until about 150 years ago. It was the Victorian age that defined pornography and prostitution as bad.
Isn't this one of those countries that's supposedly afraid of foreign agents infiltrating their country and attacking their citizens? At least, that's the excuse totalitarian regimes always use for imprisoning and torturing their own citizens. I'd say this is a call for some actual foreign assailants to launch an attack on Pakistan. All internet traffic is unencrypted. Let's steal some government accounts and passwords. Let's read the government's emails. Let's hack into their public utilities and make 'em explode. There's all kinds of havoc that can be done.
Pakistan is evidently more concerned about its own law-abiding citizens than Chinese hackers, Russian mafia, and the American CIA combined.
I sometimes ask revealing, often ignorant-seeming questions. Maybe they're harder to answer than you think.