Slashdot Mirror
France to reconsider its cryptography laws
Liberation is reporting that the French Finance minister,
Dominique Strauss-Khan,
wants to allow anybody in France to use strong encryption.
The official french assizes journal states that this liberalisation
of France's currently very strict law should occur in the next
few days. Until 1996 one had to ask permission to use any form
of encryption, or pay a 6000-500000 FF fine with 2-6 months
of prison if found out. Currently encryption that the french
authorities can break is legal, but this is not secure enough
to encourage e-commerce. (translation)
All of them, shortly. The EU is pushing through a new law requiring all encryption to be easily broken by law enforcement authorities - national governments have "hardly been involved" according to the Daily Telegraph.
The UK also wants key escrow - I can't comment on other countries, but the EU seems to manage to do that OK...
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No, the French restrictions on crypto are much more draconian than the US restrictions.
The US restricts export of crypto, but currently places no restrictions on domestic use. France forbids domestic use as well without a license, and the penalty is jail.
There are no other democratic countries I know of with a policy anything like that (well, there are some semi-democracies like Iran that ban crypto: I use "semi-democracy" for countries where people vote but power is in the hands of non-elected officials, like kings or mullahs).