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US Encryption Ban Would Only Send the Market Overseas (dailydot.com)
Patrick O'Neill writes: As U.S. legislatures posture toward legally mandating backdoored encryption, a new Harvard study suggests that a ban would push the market overseas because most encryption products come from over non-U.S. tech companies. "Cryptography is very much a worldwide academic discipline, as evidenced by the quantity and quality of research papers and academic conferences from countries other than the U.S.," the researchers wrote.
You would have thought that our government would have learned when they attempted to ban PGP, decades ago.
For those of you who don't remember, the software got classified as a munition, people who sold it could be arrested as arms trafficers. Downloads instantly moved from US servers to those in Finland (and elsewhere) and the end result was a big spectacular nothing.
Calmer heads prevailed, in the long run.
The technology is out there, the knowledge of how to do encryption is impossible to stuff back into the bottle.
Don't take life too seriously; it isn't permanent.
We have pushed many of our industries overseas again and again with heavy government regulations. While OSHA, workers comp, EPA, etc. minimum wage, etc. laws and regulations may have some sense, we have to realize that these same laws also reduce employment and push industries overseas and make many of our overseas competitors more competitive. If we could create a 100% safe society through passing safety and employment laws we may have to satisfy ourselves with 100% unemployment as well.
We could also have import tariffs and whatnot to offset the reduced cost of not caring about employee safety. But we're all about "free trade" nowadays, where companies are free to roam the globe looking for the cheapest, most desperate labor with the lowest cost of living. If laws can drive industry away, they can keep it around too.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
We have pushed many of our industries overseas again and again with heavy government regulations. While OSHA, workers comp, EPA, etc. minimum wage, etc. laws and regulations may have some sense, we have to realize that these same laws also reduce employment and push industries overseas and make many of our overseas competitors more competitive. If we could create a 100% safe society through passing safety and employment laws we may have to satisfy ourselves with 100% unemployment as well.
Well these days "more competitive" is a just synonym for "cheaper", which in turn means "higher shareholder value". Workers in Europe and North America have to deal with the cost of living in Europe and North America. It's not possible to live here on the typical salaries paid in places like India and China. So it was never an option for workers the 1st world to be cost competitive.
As for the safety issues, companies moving manufacturing offshore to places where working conditions are appalling is simply immoral. Things like this and this which, quite rightly, would never be tolerated in the 1st world are just shrugged off when they happen in places like Bangladesh. People there are apparently just an expendable resource in the pursuit of corporate profits.