Posted by
CowboyNeal
on from the waiting-for-the-other-shoe dept.
gyges writes "According to the BBC, UK officials have backed down on their encryption-key escrow efforts in order to promote eCommerce within the UK. However they also report "uncertainty as how committed the UK government is to promoting e-commerce. " Wired weighs-in as well. "
It always seems that whoever is in government they always come up with some strange ideas which always do more harm than good. I'm glad that they are resting on the issue of Key Escrow at the moment but they have to realise that it must NEVER go ahead: 1) Because the people who it is meant to catch - the criminals - can easily work round the system by not using keys that are approved by the UK government. 2) It'll scare any companies wanting to set up their ecommerce business into moving to a country where there's no threat of key escrow being introduced. I also believe that as the Internet is international individual countries shouldn't interfere this way as any legislation only affects their own country and therefore puts them at a disadvantage.
Of course the Internet is not the only way the UK government is risking putting UK based companies (and workers) at a disadvantage. A well publicised problem recently is the government putting up diesel prices as well as raising the taxes haulage firms have to pay. The diesel prices made public transport more expensive (as buses run on diesel) and the government is meant to be encouraging the use of public transport. As for the haulage firms they may locate overseas and all the UK based employees will either have to move with them or lose their jobs.
Well.. that's one way... The encryption software on the other end has to have some way of knowing how the messages are being encrypted. They've got headers and other types of information... Somewhat along the lines of mailing someone an image without a trailing.jpg,.gif, or.bmp. They can still figure it out...
> Again, how is the export policy going to > affect this?
How about for legal businesses? Those with offices in the US, the UK, and Tibet? They develop their own "Uber-Encryption" but due to export restrictions can't give it to their other offices...
The point is: Any sort of crypto can be identified and broken... all in a matter of time... by _legally_ being able to use STRONG crypto, that time could be an inhibiting factor.
Explain to me how this is a non-issue?
I want to be able to use encryption and know that uncle sam won't be able to read it at will
Slashdot Mirror
1) Because the people who it is meant to catch - the criminals - can easily work round the system by not using keys that are approved by the UK government.
2) It'll scare any companies wanting to set up their ecommerce business into moving to a country where there's no threat of key escrow being introduced.
I also believe that as the Internet is international individual countries shouldn't interfere this way as any legislation only affects their own country and therefore puts them at a disadvantage.
Of course the Internet is not the only way the UK government is risking putting UK based companies (and workers) at a disadvantage. A well publicised problem recently is the government putting up diesel prices as well as raising the taxes haulage firms have to pay. The diesel prices made public transport more expensive (as buses run on diesel) and the government is meant to be encouraging the use of public transport. As for the haulage firms they may locate overseas and all the UK based employees will either have to move with them or lose their jobs.
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Beer is best!
--------Begin-PGP-Encoded-Message
.jpg, .gif, or .bmp. They can still figure it out...
Well.. that's one way... The encryption software on the other end has to have some way of knowing how the messages are being encrypted. They've got headers and other types of information... Somewhat along the lines of mailing someone an image without a trailing
> Again, how is the export policy going to
> affect this?
How about for legal businesses? Those with offices in the US, the UK, and Tibet? They develop their own "Uber-Encryption" but due to export restrictions can't give it to their other offices...
The point is: Any sort of crypto can be identified and broken... all in a matter of time... by _legally_ being able to use STRONG crypto, that time could be an inhibiting factor.
Explain to me how this is a non-issue?
I want to be able to use encryption and know that uncle sam won't be able to read it at will