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U.S. Government Wants Public Encryption Software Removed
Anonymous Coward writes "Saw this one yesterday over at Hacker News Network. According to an article (German or English) published in Teleopolis, Janet Reno sent a letter last May to the German Federal Secretary of Justice outlining the need for the Wassanaar Nations to remove access to all encryption software from the internet as she believes such access renders the Wassanaar agreement impotent. The letter specifically mentions "public domain" encryption software. " Well, now I guess my life really will be an "open book".
I want to be President of the Universe. She wants no crypto. I guess we all have our little disappointments.
And to think, I pay money to live in ths corrupted country.
Still I don't want to government to be looking at my emails and stuff just because they can. I sometimes like to kept some email safe and private. Or at least closer to private. I don't do anything Illegal anyway, so what's the deal, who cares if I am, the government can't stop all the stuff that is going on with the Internet anyway. They just make these laws, and hope people will listen to them, yeah right! I laugh at them. But still, why shouldn't I be able to have private email? I want the government to answer that one? If I do totally legal stuff why shouldn't I/We?
Why would you be more scared. I never felt more confident and secure than when Bush, Scrowcroft, Cheney, Baker, and Powell were handling national security. Now, with China emerging as a superpower, with a twenty to fifty year boost in advanced thermonuclear weapons guidance and fusing, and a President that financed his reelection campaign from the very same country, and is bitterly opposed to any form of balistic missile defense, I think we have more reason to be scared now.
Bush was not head of "the secret police". He was head of the CIA for all of one year. The CIA is not a "secret police" in the USA. (In central america, maybe, but not the U.S.).
You people listen to Art Bell too much.
1789.
The intelligence agencies and governments may have known. Now that it has become public there should be more pressure on any government that considers outlawing encryption. The people of those countries now know for sure that they are being monitored. I don't think they'll like it any more than we do. Whether they can do anything about it is another matter though. I suppose that will vary between different countries.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 This ole redneck ain't never givin' in .... -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: PGPfreeware 6.0.2 for non-commercial use iQA/AwUBN6H7QK4lMZr99q2sEQIyuQCeIGvIwIWGVVot/Iau4e yDBcFbTh8AnR24 zpwRpETwkQkMXo/qJ6ypJCHi =NCmQ -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
"Teachers leave us kids alone
Ya, just continue to use encryption software and claim you encrypted your files with a calculator :-) ENCRYPTION certainly can't be outlawed, or a ton of little kids writing "A = Z" codes are going to jail... :-)
ok.. Real World.
1)
Terrorist Cells do not communicate. They operate independently hence: "cells"
2)
Other baddies that require electronic communication will always use encryption regardless of laws. If you want to blow up a US federal building, for instance, you would *not* care about the fines for using encrypted email. Only the good folks in the world will be affected.
3)
The US appears quite happy to limit strong non-US encryption but allow strong encryption internally. Germans have just as much right to it as Americans. Perhaps more.
4)
LICENCE implies key escrow, which would be dangerous for the companies involved. One could interept the key, or purchase it from a disgruntled government employee.
5)
If any state is serious about stopping terrorism, it is better to refine the foreign policy which often incites the problem than spy on all the citizens, companies, diplomates, leaders, and girl guides of the world. This reeks of 'Band-aid' solution.
6)
Containment of the Soviet Union and buddies is no longer an issue, and China is comparitively weak.
The only security the spy apparatus now cares about is Job Security.
look at some cases cited by the FBI:
1)the Aldrich Ames spy case where Ames was told by his
Soviet handlers to encrypt computer file information to be
passed to them;
2)the Ramzi Yousef (mastermind of the World Trade
Center)/Manilla [sic] Air terrorist case where Yousef and other
international terrorists were plotting to blow up 11 U.S.
owned airliners in the Far East in which data regarding this
terrorist plan was found in encrypted computer files
discovered in Manilla after Yousef's arrest; and
3)a child pornography case where the subject used
commercially-available encryption to encrypt pornographic
images of children that were transmitted to other subjects
of the investigation,
http://jya.com/fbi-en60399.htm
In all three of these cases, encryption was used. banning encryption would not have prevented any of these people using it. Can you imagine that nutter Yousef saying, "Golly I certainly shouldn't encrypt these files....ok, now where are the planes..."
7)
Learn the lingo:
Terrorists and child pornographers are not the only ones which use terrorism or child pornography. Governments routinely use these issues for their own ends--often completely unrelated to the stated issue. Who doesn't hate child pornographers? Since the issue is so distasteful, not many people would question any authority which invokes it. If one does not come on side they might be suspect of having a simpathetic view. It is a modern day communism.
8)
20 years from now people will ask:
What did each of us do to prevent the loss of our civil rights and the granting of all the technical tools required for a Orwellian monitoring of society.
How we let our governments turn from being the citizen's friend to being decidedly neutral, or in some cases even malevolent.
Sorry 'bout the length of the post, but the trends today give me the willies.
-Bobzibub.
Contrary to the obstructionist views of our elected officials, Americans want the freedom to communicate with anyone in the world without the fear of eavesdropping.
The only motivation stronger than the unreasonable lust for power in our executive branch is the unreasonable lust for interns.
When the American public understands what the government is trying to do, the government will be voted out of office. Until such time, I hope that the global community continues to sell fine encryption products to the United States, as we are in obvious need of them.
The products so far have been of very fine quality. Please send more!
Just add "export" to that list and they'll become world leaders in e-commerce and other fields requiring easy-to-use security in no time, eh?
Perhaps the US will then adopt import restrictions... in order to maintain some sliver of "American content". ;-)
/.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
"if my choices are between just government officials and government officials + script kiddies I'll take the former."
I don't understand your reasoning. Unlike governments, script kiddies haven't slaughtered thirty million innocent people in this century alone in the name of state security.
Maybe I'm missing something -- care to elaborate on your point?
Perhaps you should learn about what you write, my friend. If I may qoute: "...are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
So, you are quite wrong when you say that "unless the constitution says this is your right...then that right belongs to the STATE" -- both in your construction (the Constitution says "States", meaning the individual States, whereas you say STATE, which I take to mean "the government") and in your impliction.
On the other hand, it's not like anyone pays attention to the Ninth and Tenth Ammendments anyway. That is one of the prime reasons why I'm an anarchist. At least we admitt there's no such thing as written rule of law.
That he had a track reccord of getting things done and not allow for crappy two bit leaders like Hussein (Iraq) to go and tell him what to do?
Get a clue. We didn't attack Iraq because Saddam is a dictator or because he invaded Kuait(sp). Once the oil fields were free we got the hell out of there. What I love is how Bush encouraged the muslim minority (forget if they're Sunni or Shite) and the Kurds to fight Saddam, but left them to be slaghtered once we had our precious oil.
Yes, there were fuck ups during the Kosovo campaign, but at least we were there for the right reasons (even if it was about 6 years late).
I believe that can be summed up as...
^ ^~^^~^~^~~^^^~^^~~^~~~^~~^~
The Government of the Unites States wants people to participate, but not everyone can participate as president. (participate != control, and participate != "suspending suspicion" either for that matter)
I'm refering more to participation happening on the "getting to know you" level.
Your reference to the government pony show is very interesting. Every government has a sence that it must put on a pony show for its consituents. Companies put on pony shows for its investors. M$ puts on a big pony show. Having Girlfriends taught me the need to act in certain circumstances.
I'm in a play right now in fact. And I can tell you that participating, even in the small level that I am lets me see a whole bunch of what happens behind the scenes. I've learned a lot about the real history behind what the play is about. I also see the need to present the play as it is. But, it is only through participating that I was able to learn these things. That is the same with government-buisness-girlfriends.
^~~^~^^~~^~^~^~
You have spelled my name incorrectly, The blood of many will be on your hands! The mother of all battles will be waged! You will run home with your cowardice! The infidels cannot win, god is against you!
Muhamid BigUnit jihadMeister
The cat is out of the bag folks!
Information wants to be free.
What, Janet is going to burn all the copies of _Applied_Cryptography_ ?
As the book _The_Hacker_Crackdown_ showed, the US Fed is clueless about the network.
Another solution is to embed all your cypher text in JPEG files. (Stegnography?)
"No officer, we are just trading cartoons of Ms. Reno blowing Stalin, not trading cyphertext!"
Long Before either of us were born.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Face it, it's not going to be better under George W. Bush either.
Why do you say this? What evidence do you have? I realize Bush Senior supported the Clipper chip to some extent and Clinton fell in love with it, but I have not heard anything good or bad about Bush Junior regarding encryption.
Ya know. There is some sort of silly science that uses such tricks to filter the "intent" of the letter. Somehow one replaces the main terms with some words out-of-context. It allows to "emboss" the state of mind of the author. It is a rather silly game but sometimes quite effective.
But it is interesting to see this letter in this new "remake". First it shows that if this letter is a falsification, then it is a damn good one. All context looks relatively logic with the words replaced. Besides it shows the real concern of the author. It seems that is not worried too much about the dessimination of encryption itself. The author is damn worried about controlling the market of opaque.. uh encryption.
Good shot you've done
I don't think I've ever heard of a an American having a problem moving to Canada. However, the other way around is another story altogether...
Unfortunately, stupid laws that pass in the states usually become law in Canada as well. It's just not made very public or enforced much (unless the US makes a big stink about it I suppose).
Look on the bright side though, you'll get to taste beer the way it was meant to be and your dollar will be worth, what, 2 of ours?
Since when does it matter who has what to do with foreign policy? In the Clinton administration, there is no difference. And Clinton's lackeys like the U.K.'s Blair, and Czhek Republic's Havel are making statements of how it's time to move beyond the concept of "sovereignty". That is what the whole Serbian war was about. NATO believed that Serbia, being small and insignificant, was not worthy of sovereignty, so NATO interviened. Notice that NATO has yet to drop a bomb on Britan for its actions in Northern Ireland.
...if you're going to use it as a .sig on a message like that.
Oh no, you missed the point. Stopping encryption would be the worst outcome for the governments. The best outcome would be if only the bad-guys use it. You see breaking crypto is hard work, and you want to start off with a pretty good chance that what you're craking is worth it. Let's say that you can crack 1Kb/s of encrypted data. If you're listening to a pipe that has 10Mb/s you very quickly try to make sure that almost no-one mainstream uses crypto, just the "fringe".
The thing that scares me so much about this one is not that its stupid, but that it's clever as all hell, and a refutation of every time I've asserted that our (US) government isn't capable enough to mount an effective offensive against its own people. Before, I was amused, now I'm scared.
Hmm... Just in case anyone's listening... This is an obvious, and therefore bad idea. You want to try to be a little more subtle.
Well then all they need to do is prosecute people who use encryption. That makes their job much easier. And since their job is that much easier, they don't need so many people to it. Which means TAX CUTS!
The private sector will benefit from this as well, especially Bailbondsmen, lawyer, court clerks, even building contractors (to build more prisons)!
Remember those people that got sent to jail? Well, prior to sending them off to never-never land, we first confiscate every tangible item they own and auction it off (a la the war on drugs). This produces a profit for the government, which could in turn be turned around into more TAX CUTS.
Then, we can put all those prisoners to work. Prisoners will probably work for even less than minimum wage... Think of the increase in corporate profits. Which get taxed. Which means that the government can lower our federal taxes even MORE!
With this influx of spending money, more Americans can buy houses, and acquire other tangible assets... which in turn get taxed, eventually further lowering our federal taxes, to the point where you get paid just to be an American!
See, they're only trying to take care of us!
(The preceding is a joke! Even I do not take seriously!!!)
No, more interesting is that the DOJ enforces US law on its citizens. The State Department looks out for the world.
So, it is now abundently clear the the US doesn't want crypto controls to catch international terrorists, but rather only to spy on US citizens.
Bush was not head of "the secret police". He was head of the CIA for all of one year. The CIA is not a "secret police" in the USA. (in Central America, maybe, but not the U.S.).
You people listen to Art Bell too much.
I somehow would be much more scared had bush become president
We need to fight this like we have never fought anything before. This issue is probably the most important issue that the online community has faced to date, and if we stand idly by, we will lose the most important freedoms we have. It is absolutely imperative that we use every available means to fight this. I'm going to do my part, and I challenge everyone here to do the same. Freedom taken away by force can be retreived by force, but freedom given away is lost forever.- ---------------
---------------------------------------
If you need to point-and-click to administer a machine,
You are a moron.
#1, Why? The point is exactly that he was a criminal, and not just a criminal but an alternate government living inside the US. A *worse* government.
^ ~
#2 and #3, try learning about it some other way...
^~~^~^^~~^~^~^~^^~^^~^~^~~^^^~^^~~^~~~^~~
You mean Reno, don't you? Madeleine Albright is the Secretary of State, Janet Reno is the Director of the FBI and the author of this letter (which is way out of bounds for the FBI)
Oops. My bad. However, Janet Reno is the Attorney General of the USA and is not the Director of FBI.
Firstly, when the head of a branch of a government sends an official letter to the head of a branch of a different government, it is never "no more than her opinion".
A-ah, so is this the official position of the US government? No? I didn't think so. Basically I think she was testing the waters. And there is nothing special about Germany, is there? Last time I looked I could download stuff just as easily from Holland, Israel, Russia, a bunch of country domains that I don't even know what they stand for, etc. etc.
it is part of a coordinated effort by the FBI to make strong encryption unavailable.
Again, you are probably thinking of the whole US law enforcement apparatus more than of FBI, but this is essentially correct. However his has been correct and widely known for a very long time.
I don't know if Reno wears panties
I dare not guess the sources of your information, but our friend Janet never struck me as a sexually adventurous type. Going pantiless around White House -- oh, my!
We've been seeing a lot of "I'm scared, take away my rights so I feel safer" lately, particularly in the US.
And we also saw a very strong backlash against attempts to do just that. Recall the Pentium ID fiasco, and that was quite a tame issue.
The Bill of Rights has nothing to do with this letter, which was to put pressure on a German minister to do things in Germany.
It is fairly obvious that doing things in Germany and only in Germany is pretty pointless. This can work only if possession is criminalized, or if all the nations in the world agree.
It's also a hard battle to get the Bill of Rights to have something to do with this in the US. The courts are not consistant when they rule whether or not source code is protected speech. Binaries have never been protected by the Bill of Rights.
You miss the point. It's not my encryption software that is protected by the Bill of Rights, but rather my right to encrypt documents. IANAL but I think it falls under the searches and seizures amendment. Besides, encryption is a fairly vague term. If I write something in Klingon, is it encrypted? And you don't necessarily need computers -- a pencil, some paper, and a one-time pad work perfectly well. The court may order you to surrender your key, but there has never been any talk of outlawing encryption as such.
Kaa
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
Gov't loves to bait and switch the public with stuff like this. Offer something lame that takes away some freedom and the public rejects it. Threaten with something even more oppressive and people are happy to take the previously rejected offer! Don't do this!!!
Alan Deshowitz had an excellent article in Penthouse back in '97 or '98 on this very issue. He said Clinton was the worst President ever when it came to civil liberties. Of course, shortly there after Al replaced Monica as chief fellatrix, defending Clinton before congress. Never mind the right of Paula Corbin Jones to a fair trial.
But then again, Al thinks O.J. is innocent too.
Even though Wasenaar (sp?) specifically excludes "public domain" encryption software from the draconian control of the United States, is anyone surprised that the feds consider elimination of *all* encryption schemes to be a top priority? Make no mistake; this is not a government "for the people". Not at all.
Let's just hope the rest of the world isn't as spineless as the U.S. is hoping they are.
Nah. I mean, everybody signed Wasenaar, after all. Goodbye privacy.
adr
Sorry, my bad. Louis J. Freeh is the Director of the FBI. Janet Reno is the Attorney General, head of the US Department of Justice, the boss of Louis J. Freeh, and the author of the letter (well, one of her aides probably wrote it, but she signed it). Madeleine K. Albright is the Secretary of State and not the author of the letter.
This letter is still is a part of a long-term program by the DOJ and FBI to systematically remove the tools to protect our privacy in general, and encryption tools in particular.
----
----
Open mind, insert foot.
My point about Reno being appointed during the Waco standoff was that initial (IMO incredibly stupid) attack was initiated by her predecessor (A Bush apointee).
IMO once the standoff with a seperatist, heavily armed, apolypitic religous cult like the Branch Davidians had started a pecful ending is very unlikely.
Yes Reno did take responsibilty for the way it ended, and obviously in hindsight it was a stupid was to try and end the standoff. However to say that the way that incident ended was indicative of the way a President in power for a few months and of his AG in office for a few weeks approaches civil rights is stupid. It takes time for a new leader of any organization to put his or her mark on the way that organization does business, and the bigger the organization the longer it takes. Waco (and obviously the pre-Clinton/Reno Ruby Ridge) is a result of Reagan & Bush's "tough on Crime" attitude.
Since when is Janet Reno an architect of foreign policy? Who gave her diplomatic status?
The US Ambassador to Germany needs to put her in line posthaste.
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
***BZZZZZTTT!!!*** Thank you for playing, and don't forget to pick up your consolation prize.
/.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
I'm so sick of hearing the fed infringing on my rights a little bit more every day! Soon we will truely have no privacy.
I just think that we need to get togather and figure out what we can do about this!
People are all too wiling to trade their personal liberty for a little bit of safety, only to find that they have neither!
The rest of us know our rights have been under attack since (at least) FDR tried packing the Supreme Court, and probably since the time of Jackson. 'Course, rights are really for Old Money East Coasters, and responsibilities are for citizens.
Thank you Clinton voters, you picked a winner. He and those he has appointed have made great strides for freedom :)
Finkployd
Given the fact that the export restrictions in the US are currently in Constitutional question--and that it most likley seems that the courts will side with the First Amendment--the US very soon will *not* have any rules against exporting crypto...
So now the US will be asking other coutries to stop crypto when it (will be soon) legal to export any crypto from the US!
These people need to get a clue.
It's really more like 1% lunatics. It's just that
the U.S. is ~5000 km wide so there is a lot of
room for wide open lunacy that can go unnoticed
for decades.
But you are quite correct. We are no longer a
representative democracy. As least not for me.
So I will vote 3rd party next time around. There
is no longer any recognizable difference bewteen
Democrat and Republican.
Two parties are too few.
What does it matter who posted it, so long as it got posted? I don't want to sit by and let Big Brother (or Big Janet... *cough*) take me up the butt while I bitch about the fact that I saw them with that horny look in their eyes before you did...
And all it involves is an overthrow of the current nation-state system of governments! Let's do it!
FYI: Anyone can use an algorithm. Each seperate implentation must be evaluated separately. And I don't really care how many open source programmers looked at the code... I want to know that mathematicians and cryptographers spend hundreds of man hours looking it over.
I use crypto. But do I trust it completely? Not til I learn C, i don't. Anyone can explain anything to make it sound like something it's not. When the day comes that I can read the code and do the calculations myself, it'll gain my unwavering trust. Until then, I use PGP solely because it's compatible... plus the header of a PGP message will deter at least the little dinky hacker kids from even trying...
Geez! I'm right with you! I'm thinking we should go for beers sometime!!! :)
People around here need to learn that this whole thing (life) is an all or none proposition. You can't sit around forking out information on one hand, and then complain that someone's actually doing somehting with it. So far as i figure, if you're in the US, the US gov't (and schools, most of which recieve funding from the gov't) actually provide the funding, infrastructure, and manpower to what is now called the internet. It's a public resource. What you say on it is a matter of public record. If you think otherwise, you're sadly mistaken. Scott McNealy shouldn't have even muttered the following words, but he did, and not enough people listened: "Privacy is dead, get over it." If you want to remain private, don't use the internet. Don't call anyone either, unless you're at a randomly selected payphone. Best go live with that Kacsinsky character...
Email all Senators!
I don't remember if the above poster was a registered user or an AC, but i'm not the one that started this!!
It's not about political beliefs. It's about making ends meet. I've done plenty of unethical, and most likely illegal, things all from various desks at various employers. Was I proud? No. Would i have done them, had I really given it a good thought? No. Was i scared for my job had i not done what i was told? Yes.
I went against what I thought was right, all in order to get a paycheck. That's low. But that's the truth as well.
How many times does it have to be said that the genie can't be let out of the bottle. Encryption software is not delivered from the heavens by some mysterious tube that somehow ends up on the internet. Crypto software is written by real people, with real brains, and can (in principle and in practice) be reproduced using the currently available mathematical knowledge. If they plan on banning the study of computer science, number theory and related branches of maths then we should all get ready for the dark ages!
John
John_Chalisque
How many times does it have to be said that the genie can't be let out of the bottle.
Encryption software is not delivered from the heavens by some mysterious tube that somehow ends up on the internet. Crypto software is written by real people, with real brains, and can (in principle and in practice) be reproduced using the currently available mathematical knowledge. If they plan on banning the study of computer science, number theory and related branches of maths then we should all get ready for the dark ages!
John
John_Chalisque
the nation's capital better known as Ottawa is the Silicon Valley North man!!! Corel is here as well as half of Disney and ILM software designers!! If you want software, this is the place! and I just happen to live here...
According to the government if you are not doing anything wrong, then you have nothing to hide. Expect more BS like this
Agree: This battle must be fought for the right of privacy. Hopefully we can do it in such a manner that nobody gets killed. If the right of privacy cannot be obtained without violence then we will need plan B.
Th treaty was signed, but never ratified by the senate.
np Canada is the shit, no better place on earth,
ya our dollar is worth half, but we have free health care, nicer weather (safer anyway) and the best lookin women this side of the ocean!
Just because we have it better than most doesn't mean that we should sit and let gov. take away our freedoms.
Ban encription! Ban encription!
No more Pay TV!
No more E-Commerce!
No more Digital Signatures!
No more Shareware!
No more Digital Money!
No more Cell Phones!
No more Passwords!
No more Puzzel Books!
No more Criptic Misspelt Slashdot Posts!
Me thinks nobody would even dare!
(Too bad the founding fathers ( & Mothers ) did not have the forethought to put free right to encription into the constitution )
The algorithms used by PGP have been extensively peer-reviewed in the cryptographic community, which is usually quite merciless on most algorithms. Unless EVERY MEMBER of that community has been co-opted (highly unlikely), any known weaknesses in the underlying algorithms would long since have been exposed.
And since there are Open Source versions of the product, a programmer can verify for himself that the code is sound and conforms to the published specs on the algorithms. The output of the non-OS versions can then be compared to the OS output to check their integrity. I have not personally done this, but it does indicate that there is a complete chain of integrity for these products that a(n almost-) lay person could follow for himself.
So yes, empirical evidence is available to vouch for the quality of some of these products. NOTE, however, there's a lot of schlock out there, too, such as practically everything available shrink-wrapped for idiots at your friendly local software retailer. Use the Source, Luke!
Ask your doctor if getting up off your ass is right for you! -- Bill Maher
Do your US politicians really write letters like that ? It doesn't look like the sort of thing I'd expect from one government rep. to another .. far too direct and not nearly deniable enough.
..
I'd check out the credentials a bit before going into the deep end
It could be an artifact of translation, She may have written the letter in german to begin with, or the site may have translated it back into english... I don't know.
I did find that a little odd to
"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
"The good die first." "Most of us are morally ambiguous, which explains our random dying patterns." --- MST3K
1.4 of ours...
but we have free health care which renders that 1.4 to an average person to about 1/1.4 instead, and if you are sickly, like 1/00 (infinity)
The Constitution does say that but if the people in charge do not respect the Constitution then it does not really matter what it says now does it?
If you read one sig this year, don't read this one!
Since Janet (according to c't - I didn't read the link from slashdot, but since c't and Telepolis are both Heise magazines, I assume the information ids the same :) ) specifically said she was very much against Germany's "free encryption" policy, I wonder what they will do next.
Drop Bombs on Berlin?
Fire Cruise Missiles at Hamburg?
Hack into Chancellor Gerd Schroeder's Bank accounts?
Bomb the German embassy in India due to an ah, outdated map? ("We thought this was Saddam's Palace, and we thought it was Bagdad not New Delhi"..)
Don't get me wrong: I am not trying to critizise NATO's war against Yugoslavia, I firmly believe that dictatorships must be kept in check - There is NO place for genocide in Europe - and also especially when it comes to Nukes and stuff - but I think it's also time for the US to wake up and realize they're not alone on this planet.
Who the fsck gave Janet the right to try and tell OUR elected government what to do about encryption? It's bad enough that Americans are spying on us every day, all days, all times.
"Excuse me, but we just built this multi-billion dollar Echelon thing... It would be really too bad if you all started to encrypt your emails now - You don't want to make life difficult for us, do you?"
Heck yes we do.
The issue involved is one that deals with who has ownership of your personal information, and the information you generate as you conduct your day-to-day affairs. The fact that I prefer to keep my business MY business is only a statement that my life is my OWN, and not subject to public disclosure.
Try companies communicating trade secrects over the internet, for instance two branches of the same company workin in different countries. If they can't use encryption they have to have people manually transport the secrect documents.
/. anti-US rant, but I'm sick and tired of the US raping the other countries using it's economic power to force them do things. And I don't think that this is what the US people want, it's only your f*cked up goverment. Do something about it, please. BTW, the crypto agreement passed here as well in all quiet, before we even had a chance to protest...
Do you really think this will only be used for finding terrorists and lawbreakers, I think not. Foreign companies are a threat to the US economy, hence the advocation of software patents in Europe and other places, the US will most likely threaten with countermeasures if they don't comply. The fscking commie hippies trying to topple microsoft by doing coding for free are also a threat to the economy. US politics is only concerned in keeping the US the "greatest" nation on Earth, which I don't think it is. Economic and military power don't make a nation great, the people do.
BTW, Microsoft will never go down by US goverment intervention, it's too important for the economy. If you can't see that you're just plain stupid. If it did, the next M$ might come from Europe and you can't have that, can you ?
This turned out to be a typical
AC
Optimally compressed data = optimally encrypted data. Data should be first compressed and then encrypted, so that there's no redundancy from where to deduce anything about the data. This is just common sense.
Do you think gzip is a good measure of a compression system ? That's a plain LZ77 algorithm (was it combined with huffman?) very inefficient compared to modern compression software.
I've been researching compression methodology for almost 2 years at the university. Try something with arithmetic coding and statistical modelling (for instance something from the ppm group) if it's good the data should look random. BTW, Does your test take file structure into account (correlations of bytes/bits within certain range)? There's no structure to the optimally entropy-coded part of compressed data. Well compressed and encrypted data both look random.
You people are all dreaming that Clinton cares about your rights. It's classic one worlder Clinton that want's to limit your rights in the name of 'the children'. It was Reno that ordered the final attack on the Davidian Compound. make believe won't change the facts.
I Can't believe they could possibly think they could achieve such a goal. Look at the US war on drug's, now that was really an effective program by a government to crack down on something they didn't like.
...... What will have been the point.
Will they ban courses on cryptographic theory, will they burn the books?.
How will they ever stop some new piece of crypto software being written and being desseminated.
It seems like a pointless excercise in futility.
And if they ever did pass a law, outlawing it's use, and some PC weeney thinking he is cool using crypto to send a completely innocous email to a friend and get's picked up and incarcerated, assaulted in jail, and so on etc
It would seem that such actions by any government will only affect the innocent. The real crim's will not only use the crypto and write it themselves, but they will also hide it's use.
I am sure if I where a crim I certainly wouldn't send my email around with PGP headers alerting the fed's to the fact I was using crypto. I would use covert channels and hide the fact I was using crypto at all. Stick my encrypted data inside images, audio tracks (MP3's), there is more than enough data out there to hide the stuff that is encrypted.
So now the fed's not only have to have the CPU power to decrypt the stuff, they have to find it first.
For most people who live 8/8/8 a day it may seem that such things as encryption can give a chance for terrorists, criminals and spies to roam freely over the Internet. That's not the case.
Some years ago I had the good/bad chance to have some face-to-face with some mob elements. From that I can say one thing. No one in its good mind would massively use any special means of communication to pass information from one place to the other. It would immediately call the attention of enforcing organs. Meanwhile it is amazing that these people talk quite freely about their doings. However they are quite attained to use specific variations in slang to hold up critical information. On what concerns such things as bank accounts and some numeric/financial stuff they remark more their hidding efforts on the meaningless presentation of this data. Yes they use encryption and such stuff. But in most cases you may get the hidden information through several technological and practical means. It has to be noted that while one could care about encrypting an E-Mail, he may well forget to _wipe_ it from his own HDD. Besides there is a point that in some point in time either the receiver or the sender would have to possess the information open for themselves. A good observation process may give a lot of results in retrieving this information.
But there is also another point that makes DOJ pointless. Does anyone know how 48 years of dictature ended in Portugal? Well April 25th ~1 in the morning (excuse me he dumb translation) on one radiostation the following verses sounded:
Grandola (a protuguese village) "brunette" town
Land of fraternity
The people are those who overrule!
This verses came from a popular half-censored dissident song of the time. However when they were said at that moment of that day, several divisions of the Portuguese Army were set on the road to step down a crappy regime of 48 years and a colonial war of 13 years.
Besides one of these divisions had "set arrows" with another with a dumb telegram that sounded something like this:
I'm sorry I couldn't call you yesterday. My aunt got sick but now it's ok. Anyway, tomorrow I'll fly to Lisbon
So will DOJ also teach us how to express ourselves??
I work for a large company that's currently outsourcing software from a company in Europe. One of our main concerns with this project was the protection of our intellectual property. We decided on PGP to transfer source code between our two companies. Making encryption software difficult to access is making our job here a lot more difficult.
...only outlaws will have encryption.
This is certainly not a proposal designed to reduce crime. The lack of available cryptography encourages internet fraud and makes it trivially easy.
Further, criminals who might use cryptography for illegal activity certainly won't be dissuaded from doing so by the existence of laws against it, they're criminals! Criminals, by definition don't care about laws.
Of course, these arguments are familiar to anyone who has fought gun control...
Compressed data lacks redundancy in that a file is packed together as tightly as possible. An encrypted file lacks redundancy in that aspect, as well as an added amount of "randomness" that supposedly (ideally), only the intended recipient can decode (in public-key implentations).
Also, just about every file you'll ever transmit or recieve has recognizable headers. So do PGP'ed files... You could go and remove the headers, but then your file could be flagged as not having recognized headers and therefore should be inspected.
I guess it's just a matter of how paranoid you care to be.
I'm not an expert either, I've just taken to reading as much as I can so as to amass knowledge.
YEAH READ what you wrote...The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
-- Article IX
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
or in otherwords...unless the constitution says this is your right...then that right belongs to the STATE!!!
learn about what you quote first
I have a much better idea than removing cryptographic software from the Internet. Simply remove Janet Reno from office.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
Step 1: Key escrow becomes mandatory.
Step 2: Someone repetitively cracks the third-party keys and posts them on non-US websites.
Step 3: Consumers in the US refuse to use their credit cards on the internet, while other countries are making tons of dough.
Step 4: E-commerce companies flip out.
Step 5: Everyone is mad at the government.
Step 6: The government reverses the law, or is replaced by one that will.
Step 7: Encryption restrictions become as scary to politicians as the Vietnam war.
And we never have problems with encryption regulations again.
--------
"I already have all the latest software."
Time to start guerilla crypto projects in the third world countries. Woah! I'm going to dedicate my fucking life to free strong crypto (tm).
No one takes Reno seriously, not the government, or the media. Everyone knows she's a nut.
Well, to be honest, I was afraid he'd do away with all my civil liberties.
Looks like the joke's on me...
Will that be my contribution to the world: "He solved a head count problem"? - Asok, 'Dilbert'
content of e-mail reading:
"Hi Nat, this is a sample output of the random generator I wrote. Care to check it if it's any worth?"
- What does the first amendment have to do with this? You are completely free to say whatever it is you want to say.
You aren't free to say, "Here's an encryption program I wrote: ". Source code is speech, just as much as writing any other 'document' is."(Yes I know that the law is technically about the software and not the source code. But if you use an interpeted language like perl then they are the same thing.)
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
www.lp.org
Hello all--
I personally believe it's a real letter. One might ask why they sent it to a German official. It's certainly interesting that Ralf Engelschall (the Apache + OpenSSL + mod_ssl developer) live and operate out of Germany.
Somehow I wouldn't be surprised if the Reno's counterparts in Finland (ssh) and Canada (OpenBSD) received letters as well.
Just my thoughts.
You're right about the Waco & Duby Ridge incidents and how people are blaming Clinton and Reno for them. The vast majority of these people are clearly Anti-Clintonites who are trying to confuse others into ousting the Pres. because of his stances on abortion, separation of church & state, etc. (liberal views in general). As Lord Kano pointed, Reno did participate in the cover-up of Waco but that's mainly to prevent a witch-hunt by Republicans of FBI officers. Anyways, back to the anti-Clintonites, those people also emphasize that the FBI were "cracking down" on religious freedom and the 2nd Amendment but they clearly tried to hide the fact that family members of Davidions (sp?) were concerned that contact between them were broken so the FBI had another reason to investigate the cult.
Wasn't it the japanese, in world war 2, that turned around and slaughtered themselves for fear of being captured by the allies?
Kind of a Death before Dishonor kind of thing...
LOL,
I know, it's cool.
But that fits exactly with my point!
What if the govt was scanning slashdot posting looking for the keyword "heroin". You could have just had your life ruined because of a typo. Yes information is very powerful and can be evil, but it's moderation must be done very carefully and within the bounds of the established rules, there shouldn't be exceptions when it comes to inalienable rights such as privacy for just this reason! The innocent must always be innocent! Thread postings don't make very good evidence anyway, there are a million ways they could be forged...
Think about all the innocent peace loving people whose lives were ruined because of the cold war communist hatred... and compare it to the actual amount of people that were evil+communist...
What they want to do is be able say that anything that is encrypted must be so to hide it from the government. Right now, too many things are encrypted for them to tell what to start decoding. So if this law passes, put the string: "----BEGIN PGP MESSAGE----" around your messages just to mess up their filters. Just like we'll put random ECHELON keywords in our META tags.
--------
"I already have all the latest software."
What about encryption followed by stenography. You can stuff a lot on information into a graphics file with loseless compression by storing data on the lowest significant bit without degrading the quality of the picture.
How 'bout a law that all public officials must use public key encription to sign all documents they produce. Ofcourse, long keys will be needed so one arm of the government doesn't forge signatures to blame some other arm of the goverment for ceratin docs.
ya right.
Why even worry? We're talking about a government that couldn't even keep prohibition going, and that wasn't even a first amendment right. Our government bans some firearms and they end up being murder weapons. Our elected officials are all bark, no bite.
"The best laid plans of mice and men gang oft agley..." - ROBERT BURNS
If you want to remain private, don't use the internet. Don't call anyone either, unless you're at a randomly selected payphone. Best go live with that Kacsinsky character.
Nah, there's no privacy in jail. Which, btw, seems to be the ultimate direction towards which those subversive radicals (i.e. those who are concerned about their privacy) are headed in the not-so-distant future.
I suggest you all write (snail) mail to the embassies of each country in the W* agreement and point out to them that it's in our best interest that they don't allow encryption since we'll be able to keep spying on their companies and governments which means we'll stay on the top of the heap when it comes to job bids and technology.
See how many countries make encryption MANDATORY after a few thousand letters like that.
"Remember the Boston Tea Party? The colonists were under incredibly strict and unhuman laws that stripped them of their rights."
I thought they objected to the level of taxes, and presumably being subject to a "foreign" power. I'm not sure what you're thinking of as "unhuman" in this regard.
What's the big deal if you don't have anyting to hide? Spies
use encryption.
Anyway, do you really think The Man going to take the trouble
to intercept private email, etc., without a search warrant?
Governments have better things to do - like monitoring the
activities of suspected terrorists, dangerous cult leaders, and
foreign adversaries.
It is very strange that folks who post here want "open source"
software (translate free) but want to hide their own writings from
public scrutiny, but look further for the reasons and the hypocrisy
involved..
What about paper correspondence. That can be encrypted also.
Do these laws and proposed laws apply to all forms of encryption
or just to electronic data and communications?
Anyway, folks who post here have already given up their rights
by signing various non-disclosure agreements with employers and
surrendering all rights to privacy in the workplace (whatever
code you produce while employed here belongs to us) and
submitting to network monitoring of one's activities on the job.
Since you have already surrendered your right to privacy, how can
you compartmentalize that from the rest of your life, especially
considering that so many programmers and sysadmins spend
most of their time at work.
Do you really think the government is any worse than employers?
I guess the government isn't paying you anything to surrender
your privacy to them. Everybody has his price.
Hypocrities!
2) Personal privacy is a vital aspect of personal freedom. This one also has implications for encryption.
3) Free will is the vehicle which drives humanity forward and keeps us together even through the toughest times. Note, however, that the right to free will does not include the right to infringe upon the free will or other rights of anyone else. This has implications on censorship as well as other issues. Note that, of course, free will includes free speech.
I dunno, but that sounds not all that far from the Libertarian position. Some people don't like the LP's position on a particular issue, where they feel the gov't should have more control. But if you think about the kind of system of goverment we have in the U.S., you realize that there will always be compromise, so unless the LP had 100% control of the gov't, and all of the office-holders were rabid platform-thumpers, it's not likely that the LP platform would be enacted unmodified.
If you look at it realistically, if the LP started gaining support, and became a serious force in the gov't, it would make it *much* harder for anti-freedom legislation of all types to pass. That's what I want, so I vote mostly a straight LP ticket.
I figure the authoritarians won't be going away anytime soon, so why not try to keep them in check?
--
Folks,
...) and always be prepared to defend yourself, kith, and kin!
Governments outlaw guns, so that only the government and criminals (who are some times the same group) will have weapons to determine your (the citizens) welfare and servitude to the bene-violent state.
This Neo-Welt-Nazi (NWN) government perspective (control personnel protection weapons), by people of a little above normal inteligence, is true with the encryption issue globally. Control/take the weapons and encryption tools from the citizen and then the evil (politicians/criminals) will control the people.
No one should ever think that any government is honest/good (individual politicians may be good), because an institution (Government) has no ethics (ethics/feelings/honor reside exclusivly [in varying degrees] in the individual human trust.).
Never trust an institution (church, government, corporation,
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
-----BEGIN PGP MESSAGE-----
Version: GnuPG v0.9.7 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: For info see http://www.gnupg.org
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=EuwZ
-----END PGP MESSAGE-----
Under Republican Man Exploits Man, Under Democrats It's Just The Opposite.
Hiya Janet!
You all are way too deep into this "Spy" buisness.... Step back and look at the big picture.
Someone needs to form the "General Public For Computer Privacy" campain or something. Seriously, the word needs to get out, and to the general public, in simple words, without code and jargon, asap.
If your mom could hit a button on her mail client that wraped up her email so that only her sister Betty could read it, she probably would... That's the goal of encription, even though it's not at a fully functional GUI level yet (and partly due to regulations).
Now, tell all those people what encription really means... Tell them that any nosy 16 year old with a part time job at an ISP can probably read all thier email at will. Tell them that encription is about privacy, not about computer hackers in dark rooms braking into the CIA. Your not going to be able to keep encription until the general public understands what it really is.
What are the legal implications? Does this mean that I can't email my friend in Denver if I use pgp in the future if the government has it's way? If that is the legal case, then, it could easily be made a legal case that I can't send him a letter in a sealed envlope with a stamp on it, because no one can "snoop" in the mail easily.
The PEOPLE need to know, so someone needs to tell them. Janet Reno can get on CNN and tell the world that she is makeing it a safer place. Unless someone else can stand up, orginize, and get press coverage, they will believe it. If this was a matter of "makeing the world a safer place" and she proposed allowing open inspection of anyones house without a search warrent, don't you think there would be a few people who could easily understand it and explain the implications to those who don't?
The REAL problem is, we are all just preaching to the choir here... Everyone agrees that we would like to be able to at least ATTEMPT to have a little privacy... But, can you really explain it in terms that your parents, your ministers, your school teachers, and your children can understand? That's where the effort should be focused.
Honorable Madams and Sirs of the House and Senate
h tml), where she
Hello, my name is Philip Miess, and I am a resident of New York.
I would like to express my displeasure with the actions of this
administration and specifically Janet Reno in regards to cryptographic
software.
Repeatedly the government has prepared bills to make
only one cryptographic standard with keys for the Government or to
require that all cryptographic software be set up with a key for
the US government. In every case the American public has said loudly
that we do not want to government to have control of how or cryptographic
software is designed or used.
In an ideal world where no one is dishonest
and no one takes unfair advantage or others there would be no need for
cryptography because no one would read your letters or intercept your
other communications. However both the public and government officials
have often been found to be less than perfectly honest and less
than completely fair. In a world such as this it is necessary to make
sure that any information that could be used against you in a business
or personal manner be protected from outside observation. In order to
do this many programs have been developed both commercially and for
free private use.
Now, though, Attorney General Reno has targeted this software in a
letter to German Federal Secretary of Justice Herta Daeubler-Gmelin
(http://www.heise.de/tp/english/inhalt/te/5124/2.
specifically mentions the existence of public domain, free cryptographic
software from the Internet:
--begin excerpt from Janet Reno
"Much work remains to be done. In particular, I believe we must soon
address the risks posed by electronic distribution of encryption software.
Although the Wassenaar Nations have now reached agreement to control the
distribution of mass market encryption software of certain cryptographic
strength, some Wassenaar Nations continue not to control encryption
software that is distributed over the Internet, either because the
software is in the "public domain" or because those Nations do not control
distribution of intangible items. While I recognize that this issue is
controversial, unless we address this situation, use of the Internet to
distribute encryption products will render Wassenaar's controls
immaterial."
--end of excerpt from Janet Reno
Needless to say, this is a very disturbing paragraph, with the
gravest of implications about the attitude of the United States'
government towards privacy and respect for its citizens. And hence this
letter: I call on you to stand up for the rights of free citizens, and for
their essential civil liberties and privacies. Let Attorney General Reno
know that the citizens that form the base of power of this nation do not
wish to be told what is good for them, and that the conditions of the
Wassenaar Agreement in regards to cryptographic software for the
protection of the privacy of free citizens will not stand, and to pursue
them is in contravention of not only the wishes of that citizenry, but
also of the principles of this free nation. Thank you for your time and
your effort.
-Sincerely Philip Miess
The ban on encryption software could well be unconstitutional.
Forget free speech for a moment; this is another set of grounds. Consider that another amendment forbids illegal search and seizure. Encryption's whole purpose is to guard against such things. Therefore, it could be said that banning encryption is an infringement on Constitutional protection from illegal search and seizure. In fact, since Echelon has been proven to exist, that's exactly what the encryption ban is.
The primary purpose of law enforcement is to punish those who break the law (be it by removing them from society or imposing fines or other punishments), and it always has been. "Prevention" is only a secondary purpose, an one which has always been carried out only indirectly. Perhaps Janet Reno has forgotten this. I very much doubt that she intends to be the totalitarian dictator she seems to want to become. Then again, I also doubt that she's ever read Milton.
Already been done: Superdemocracy by (the late) Tim Stryker (of Galacticomm fame). Published in 1992 or 1993 by Cool Hand Publishing, which is in either Ft. Lauderdale or Boca Raton Florida.
--Rob
US Crypto Laws are in violation of the fourth amendment of the US constitution. Which states the rights of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects...
...shall not be violated...
...yada yada need a warrant...
anyway, point is, "papers" can be interpreted as meaning documents, which can refer to computer data. Therefore, the US government cannot make any laws that may prohibit anyone (US citizen or not) from having access to things neccesary to the security of their documents.
Opinionated Law Student Strikes Again!
I hate to burst your bubble, but this is utter bullshit. The Republicans only care about the 2nd Amendment when it's time to garner votes, but leave it at the side when legislation comes along. The "Assault Weapon" ban, Brady, et cetera, only went into effect because of Republican votes.
Each party may have different priorities, but the Constitution is not among them. They use the Bill of Rights for toilet paper just as much as the Democrats. The only thing worse than a Republican is a Democrat - and the only thing worse than a Democrat is a Republican.
True, banning encryption would not stop criminals from using it...however encrypted data is VERY easy to tell from non-encrypted data, so you can tell if someone is using it illegaly!
You are not going to do anything but to continue to allow employers
and corporations and governments to define the rules of your
life. What makes you think you have rights?
Think things are any better in Canada? Just more of the same
except less money to go around.
People almost everywhere put up with all kinds of things so long
as there is economic prosperity for them. Especially nerds who
post at Slashdot!
If the majority of people suffers materially because of lack of
freedom (which they will gladly surrender for money if they can)
and if they discover that nothing is gained by giving up one's
freedom then things will change.
To keep on topic, the Clinton administration, spearheaded by
Reno, has done a terrible job of protecting freedom and privacy
in electronic space. But, the Republicans are even worse.
This stripping away of privacy and freedom is largely the work
or nerds, who willingly work for corporations to build an infrastructure
with which this can be accomplished. The general public, mostly
due to television, has now accepted the idea that corporations
should call the shots in all areas, and that this whole process should
be coordinated and justified by computers. (The computer says so,
it must be right!)
It's not that computers and the internet are "evil" - not at
all. However, combined with the widespread public apathy
and outright surrender of one's humanity to the almighty dollar,
by intelligent people who should know better, the stage is
now set for massive exploitation of this infrastructure
by governments and corporations. (Not that they haven't already
been doing it for some time in things like insurance and credit
reporting, etc.).
You have made your own bed, geeks, now sleep in it. Janet
Reno will come by to tuck you in every night after you have
said your prayers to uncle Bill.
Letter sent to all Senators:
2 .html), where she
"Distinguished Madams and Sirs,
Hello, my name is Joe Doyle, and I am a resident of California.
In December of 1998, I was dismayed by the news of the Wassenaar agreement
nations agreeing to honor the export restrictions of all members in
regards to cryptographic software. This was considered by many, myself
among them, to be a great blow to the legitimacy of the signature
governments, and to the government of the United States in particular, as
well as a major setback in the protection of the essential civil liberties
upon which our country was founded.
Cynically, we resigned ourselves to a future where our voices
would be ignored, striking an implicit bargain with the Devil in exchange
for being left alone. We would merely acknowledge that our rights were
being eroded from above, and go underground, developing and promulgating
the software needed to protect ourselves without the blessing of our
nations. This software is public domain cryptographic programs, freely
available to all in need of them, and relatively unpersecuted by those
that would attempt to monitor us due to the distributed, nebulous nature
of their availability.
Now, though, Attorney General Reno has targeted this software in a
letter to German Federal Secretary of Justice Herta Daeubler-Gmelin
(http://www.heise.de/tp/english/inhalt/te/5124/
specifically mentions the existence of public domain, free cryptographic
software from the Internet:
--begin excerpt from Janet Reno
"Much work remains to be done. In particular, I believe we must soon
address the risks posed by electronic distribution of encryption software.
Although the Wassenaar Nations have now reached agreement to control the
distribution of mass market encryption software of certain cryptographic
strength, some Wassenaar Nations continue not to control encryption
software that is distributed over the Internet, either because the
software is in the "public domain" or because those Nations do not control
distribution of intangible items. While I recognize that this issue is
controversial, unless we address this situation, use of the Internet to
distribute encryption products will render Wassenaar's controls
immaterial."
--end of excerpt from Janet Reno
Needless to say, this is a very disturbing paragraph, with the
gravest of implications about the attitude of the United States'
government towards privacy and respect for its citizens. And hence this
letter: I call on you to stand up for the rights of free citizens, and for
their essential civil liberties and privacies. Let Attorney General Reno
know that the citizens that form the base of power of this nation do not
wish to be told what is good for them, and that the conditions of the
Wassenaar Agreement in regards to cryptographic software for the
protection of the privacy of free citizens will not stand, and to pursue
them is in contravention of not only the wishes of that citizenry, but
also of the principles of this free nation. Thank you for your time and
your effort.
-Joe Doyle, Citizen
---end letter from me
-Joe Doyle, doyle@nebcorp.com
Also, your 20 characters only covers a very small subset of the information I encrypt.
Today I encrypted someone's name and address. He'd much rather it didn't get into someones else's hands, so I fired up pgp and now only I can read it. That's about 80 characters.
I've also got a story I'm writing. I don't want anyone to read it until it's finished. It's approximatly 50,000 characters.
The SSL server at work has transfered approximatly 1.5Gb of encrypted traffic in the last 3 weeks. Perhaps much of this didn't need to be encrypted, but it's just a dumb server - it has no way of recognizing a password from a graphic.
Now, I've got no particular reason to conceal any of these from the government, but I do have reason to make it hard to decrypt, as there are plenty of people who can decrypt 40 or 56 bit encryption in an unacceptably short amount of time, and with the ever declining cost of CPU cycles, I know of no way of ensuring that only a govermental CPU can crack a system while a private CPU cannot.
Ok here we go once again: "It is a fake! No it is Eternal Truth!"
Please before stating such things give some argumentation and analysis.
Yes it is probable that the letter is a fake. But do we have any grounds to consider it this way? Well there is one point. The letter is relatively superficial about its subject. It may be called a letter not meaning too much above general considerations.
However the last paragraph remarks that this is only a letter of intent. The author just tries to recall its intention to continue a discussion that was left somewhere...
Besides the letter is rich in specific terms and presents an internal logic. Note that usually fakes intend to be quite silly on the whole context of the text. Most authors of the fake worry much more about "hot phrases" and $50 dollar words among cheap statemants and disregard how the whole thing would look like. Here we don't have such case. However this does not demonstrate that this is a fake.
There is one thing that may prove/deny a fake at certain extent. How public is the content of this text? By nearly 100% everyone knows about this. In one way or the other all this information has been mostly public. Some facts may be not so well known but that's a problem of the audience not the sources. So someone could have made a smart fake that would run very near DOJ activities. Only some salt makes it "hot" by the wording around "public domain". Well considering some later "backstage games", there is some data remarking DOJ's attempts to make a "last and final" landing exactly in that field. So the letter, by timing, context and external data fits well here.
So it is quite probable that this letter is not a fake at all. It is just a polite call over a powerful interlocutor to continue what DOJ has been doing recently: Try to put everyone in its bandwagon.
Republicans believe in LESS government control.
You liberals are your own worst enemy!
Down with Klinton!
And they don't have terrorists and organized crime, of course. I mean, other than...
Wake up people, this "modern" networked society is becoming more and more like totalitarian regime, just waiting for Big Brother to come and flip a switch.
Well I hope I am exaggerating...
Let us look at the respected record.
1. Waco
2. Appointment of independent counsel to investigate extra-marital affairs of a president
3. Proposal to regulate what is very hard to regulate; and not of much utility.
On ocassion, a record will speak for itself.
The slashdot quote of the day (or hour, or whatever it is) when I read this is really appropriate, and quite amusing. For those of you who missed it:
Politics is not the art of the possible. It consists in choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable. -- John Kenneth Galbraith
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
The day the US government takes away my right to freedom and security I will take my laptop and rifle and head for the hills.
Any government that publically declares that they should/do have the right to look over my shoulder at everything i do is not one i care to be a part of. I wonder if canada would mind one more cynical American?
If i was not so upset i might be inclined to shout first post, but in my current state i do not think it would even amuse me the least.
(no really AC -really ffatTony)
Too many people here are falling into the same trap that Congress fell into during its Waco hearings. All they cared about was scoring (or deflecting) political shots. Republicans wanted to pin it on Clinton, so Democrats brushed aside the truth and defended their man. Both sides clearly weren't interested in the REAL issue.
You should watch the documentary Waco: The Rules of Engagement (see http://www.waco93.com), which was nominated for an Oscar last year. There are some priceless scenes in the movie, such as FBI tanks smashing down walls while loudspeakers shout, "This is not an assault! This is not an assault!"
On the day of the final assault (which was not an assault), Reno was more interested in giving a speech somewhere than in being present during her agency's first big event under her leadership. In the movie, she comes off looking like a typical bureaucrat who cares about her responsibilities no more than she has to but dutifully helps cover everybody's ass.
So while much of the blame for Waco goes to the Bush administration, Clinton gets some blame for defending the same agencies and not doing anything about them. We should have expected better from someone who was supposed to be such a fresh alternative.
But arguing about which of the two ruling parties is at fault, without considering REAL alternatives, is like debating Windows vs. Mac while ignoring Linux and FreeBSD.
As for your final reference to the Atlanta shootings, people who are pro-cryptography should be allies with people who are pro-gun. Both are tools which can be used for good or evil. And the same government wants to take away your right to have either. The NRA gets villified by the media a lot, but that's just because more people know about guns than crypto. If PGP were on everyone's desktop, you can be sure the media would have all kinds of stories about terrorists using PGP.
If there is a slight silver lining in this dark
cloud, it'll be that once encryption software is
banned, there'll be no disincentive for people
to use really really strong encryption instead of
weak (and currently legal) encryption.
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
Crypto _has_ been available from the get go...so I'm not sure what you're talking about here. You could have read Rivest-Shamir-Adelman's paper back in the seventies (or Diffie-Hellman's work) in a variety of international math publications. China has had full access to this material. I don't see cryptographic restrictions as promoting national security interests in the slightest. The information is available to everyone. Now the governmnet just wants to make it harder for the average citizen to get easy-to-use programs that do what they have been able to do.
shane
p.s. Implemented an RSA message cryptosystem (of arbitrary key length/strength) in Scheme for my freshmen programming class at Cornell.
...who took the joke seriously, there are some problems with that general theory:
1.) If you prosecute anyone who uses crypto, then you are still not catching child pornographers and terrorists and prosecuting them for their crimes...just people who use crypto. Cuz the really juicy $hit that you want to nail them for is encrypted! Unless you stick a gun to their heads and force them to give you the GPG passphrase. That kind of self-incrimination is not legal in the U.S., I believe.
2.) Illegalizing all narcotics has not led to a tax break at all. Not since every Chief Idiot since Ronald Reagan has increased spending on the ridiculous "War on Drugs." More money is spent preventing people from doing what they want with their own body than you would believe.
shane
He's on the record saying "There should be limits to freedom", regarding, if I remember correctly, a web spoof of his own campaign site...
"Be nice, veer left, and never stop thinking" Iain Banks - Walking On Glass
I wonder if it makes it illegal for me to write my own "closed" encryption system that I and my friends use? I have a simple X-or setup that is nearly un-crackable unless you obtain the program that creates the cypher. (un-crackable as in you couldnt read it in about 5 - 10 years) Heck, using a modified enigma system would make something nearly un-crackable. does this make my Java-ring with the enigma code in it illegal?
maybe it's time to start stuffing my messages in Gif's again... hide the message in something "normal".....
Dont the states just plain suck sometimes?
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
It is the content. Duh. Sorry I had to explain that to you.
Actually, Bob Goodlatte, R-VA, authored a very good encryption bill.
If it could ever get through unadulterated, America would be a pretty happy place for encryption.
I told my representative to support it, did you??
"oohhh... I didn't know Schopenhauer was a philosopher!"
Is The Letter a Fake? Who knows. I think that the previous poster made a good case for the thesis that The Letter, in bulk, is not a fake.
However, bulk fakes are classic examples of Big Lie style propaganda. Historically, the Big Lie approach to agit-prop is actually very hard to pull off successfully. You need a number of things, most importantly a media which will uncritically echo every one of your statements, even when they contradict one another. That certainly can happen in the modern world, but its harder than most of us would like to pretend. Much as crypto may matter to me, it just isn't that compelling to the world at large.
For that reason, I think that The Letter is not concocted out of the whole cloth. A forger trying to construct such a letter would get found out too quickly.
However, that doesn't mean the letter is real. The most effective way to create a fake document is to insert an isolated false statement into a larger body of real text. The letter is so benign in all ways except the hot-button mention of public domain systems that I wonder if that method wasn't used. I'd like to see a reproduction of the original the newspaper in question had before I decided that Janet Reno was trying to close that loophole for crypto.
Yeah, it was a blast.
Those damn graphics and multimedia really screwed it up too.
E-Commerce: Fine by us.
Us: That means SSL is dead, and passwords and credit cards will be sent in the plaintext.
Consumers: We won't shop the net anymore!
E-Commerce: Eeep! Hey, Feds, here's a big bag of money!
Gov't: Um, we suddenly have no problem with encryption.
Us: Yay!
(Heck, special interests work for most groups,
why not here?)
Seriously, to ban any encryption on the net is
nearly impossible. And again, are criminals
(the ones they are fighting against) going to care
if encryption software is legal or not?
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
So why don't you use the Freedom of Information Act to find out if the letter exists? If it turns up then great, you have solid evidence of a government attempt to restrict our rights (including mine: I'm in the UK where we can't appeal to the 1st Ammendment). OTOH if it doesn't turn up then either it was never sent or the government has effectively denied its existence and you have won a minor victory.
Paul.
You are lost in a twisty maze of little standards, all different.
Key escrow sucks, yes. But if they outlaw ALL encryption can we still fall back and take them up on that offer? I don't want government officials reading my correspondence, but if my choices are between just government officials and government officials + script kiddies I'll take the former.
Look at this (partial) output from a program called ent written by John "Random" Walker, founder of Autodesk. "Chi square distribution" is a common test used to test random number generators. 0-1% or 99-100% means 'probobly not random', 1-5% to 95-99% means suspect. From 5-95% means the data appears to be random.
--For a large tar compressed with gzip:
Chi square distribution for 3283104 samples is 26434.55, and randomly would exceed this value 0.01 percent of the times.
--For the same file encrypted with PGP:
Chi square distribution for 3264143 samples is 252.38, and randomly would exceed this value 50.00 percent of the times.
As you can see, to this test compressed data looks completely non-random, and PGP encrypted data looks perfectly random. I get the same result with other compression tools other than gzip, like bzip2 and compress.
ROFL.
;)..
Isn't PGP, OpenSSL, SSLeay everywhere?
We have all of them here in Malaysia. 128 bit crypto etc. No restrictive crypto regulations.
The US of A can take many steps backwards if they want, we don't mind. Makes us more competitive.
Keep up the good work Clinton. I wonder who's the main campaign contributor this time
Or maybe the US of A has decided to let the rest of the world overtake them...
Whoopee!
Link.
p.s. Imagine Int'l spies cracking the US secrets easily and not vice versa.
Hmmm, if I remember my history correctly....
Hitler banned secret's (communication that wasnt easily readable by government agents) and weapons before he started his campain of genocide...
When will we start seeing the Children of Hitler.. er.. Reno? Maybe we need our young to start monitoring and reporting to the state agency's their parents actions... just in case they are un-american.. we must be sure that all are very american... and help those that are not...
I think the Jews in 1940's barely lived through their help..
We're from the government and here to help you....
I dont know about the rest of you, but I'll be one of the few probably publically hanged for running an underground to help the opressed..
Siek Heil mien Furer Reno!
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Guvf vf onq. V'ir whfg tbggra cnegf bs gur Fjrqvfu tbireazrag gb yvfgra gb gur nethzragf ba jul fbsgjner cngragf vf onq, naq abj V unir gb tb nsgre gurz nobhg rapelcgvba gbb? Bu jryy.
No way. Albright was basically saying "wouldn't it be nice if encryption wasn't available to non-government entities". This is no more than her opinion. Granted, her opinion carries some weight, but it's a faaaaaar way from actually enacting coordinated legislation that would prohibit private encryption.
So don't get your panties all bunched up. This is not going to happen for a very large set of reasons, starting with political climate and ending with the Bill of Rights (at least for Americans).
Kaa
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
How would this affect encrypted password in OS's like NT and *nix?
If it enjoys bipartisan support, then get rid of the bipartisans!
The Republicans, as a party, are not too different from the Democrats. There are some principled congressmen, but most will support any erosion of privacy as soon as the "law-and-order" button gets pressed.
The Libertarian Party (http://www.lp.org) has consistently opposed internet censorship (it's right on their front page) and crypto controls.
Of course, they only get a small percentage of the vote. Many who are in basic agreement with them still won't vote for them because that would be "wasting their vote." Scanning through the posts above, it looks to me like some people have realized it didn't matter which of the "major" candidates won, for their rights are being trampled either way. So who were the ones who wasted their vote?
When will the 1st Amendment finally be upheld?
I think you people are overreacting a bit here. Janet Reno never says that she wants to encourage the banning of all encryption software. What she is requesting is cooperation in enforcing the rules of the Wassenar Agreement on electronically distributed software, as well as software sold in stores, etc. She is not saying that they should ban all distribution of encryption (although she might like that, it is not what she says).
Granted, I am as against restrictions against cryptography as anyone, but if we go on a holy war of flammage on this one, we are going to look like illiterate morons. Reno is advocating that no exception to the export regulations be made for public domain and/or electronically distributed software.
If we are going to make strong encryption easily availible to everyone, we need to fight the battle as intelligent people, not as a bunch of cultish raving lunatics.
-Cheetah
A country keeping secrets from its people - well, a necessary evil, I suppose.
But when citizens are not allowed to keep secrets from their country - that is intrusive, and violates privacy in a fundamental way.
Just as a warrant to search someone's home requires probable cause -- so should searching someone's private communications. Blanket 'wire' tapping just in case someone might be committing a criminal act is totally wrong. Hopefully someday the computer-paranoid Congress will start to see it that way. A few already do (Rep Slade Gorton, US Senate, WA, for one).
- Speed
That means easing export controls on computers and encryption products that can already be purchased on the open market.
But then he follows that up with:
At the same time, as the use of encryption programs increases, American law enforcement must always have the resources to stay ahead of the criminal use of that technology.
He just don't get it, folks. The only way to "stay ahead of the criminal use of that technology," even partially, is some kind of key escrow. And that will only work with law-abiding criminals who use legal encryption software. Ultimately, that is not the answer for people who live in a (nominally) free country.
I'm sticking with the Libertarian Party. They may not be perfect, but I agree with them a heck of a lot more often than I agree with any other party.
--
What does all this drivel mean for ipV6?
In case you don't know, with ipV6, ipSEC(an end to end encryption protocal) is mandatory. How will this be distributed in Wassanaar Nations? Right now our only hope is open source. Besides, as a network security guy, the only products I use are ones that I can do a full audit on...
Blessed are the pessimists, for they have made backups.
As soon as I get my degree, that is. Been living in Seattle (shadow of M$, Amazon, and StarBucks) for too long. At least I only worked for Starbucks, so I still have my soul.
Wow...Reno truly is the pitbull of the morons in government. "Go get 'em boy! That's it!"
I must say, though, that this confuzzes me. Last I looked, the Attorney General has no power to deal with foreign governments. All interactions must go through the Prez, Congress, or the State Dept. So where does she get off doing this?
I suppose my next question would be what can be done on this issue? Even though I've only recently started to follow the debates on encryption, I know that this is a bad thing. Public domain keys, which were not, if I read this right, covered by this agreement, are now going to be included because Reno and the US govt. are a bunch of paranoid loonies? Ridiculous. Any suggestions for a way to protest this (other than writing my congressmen/women to yank her dog-chain back in line) are most welcome...
"Evil will always triumph, because good....is dumb!" Dark Helmet
There are a lot of technology companies in Ottawa. There are also some cool computer graphics companies in Toronto and Montreal. Alias|Wavefront and Side Effects Software are located in Toronto. Softimage and Discreet Logic are located in Montreal.
This post should be score 5, IMO. This guy has got his shit together.
Normally, I don't care for what my gouvernment does (they are too dumb, anyway). But in this special case, I think I'll have to raise my voice.
Who the fuck allowed this Reno bitch to attempt control on our (my!) personal freedom?
Reno, go home. Stay there, and keep your foul trap shut. Nobody asked four your opinion over here. We want to keep the little freedom we still have (despite all your voyeurism agencies attacks on us)
Even if Janet Reno wants encryption software removed from public networks, there's not a chance in hell she'll get it.
The day the United States Govt. declares encryption software illegal, I will personally go out and write a simple utility to do RSA encryption/decryption. I will then take said utility, and distribute it until I'm blue in the face on every #w4r3z IRC channel, every script-kiddie hotline server, every usenet newsgroup I can uuencode and post it to. If I don't, I'm sure a thousand other people will.
They (meaning the U.S. Govt.) still have this silly delusion that they have some kind of control over the internet. They don't. Aside from the fact that the physical internet spans international borders, and therefore isn't subject to anyone's laws as a whole, information space itself isn't subject to the same laws as meatspace. As more and more of our lives take place in information space they (again meaning the U.S. Govt.) will become increasingly irrelevant, and hopefully in a few decades we'll all forget about them.
I can dream, can't I?
Either way, we do need to fight this one with every ounce of strength we've got. This is not a battle we can afford to lose.
"I think any time you expose vulnerabilities it's a good thing." -Attorney General Janet Reno
"Suspected terrorists, dangerous cult leaders, and foreign adversaries", you say? Those definitions are *extremely* subjective. They have been applied in this century to dissenters both left and right, and to any group that the government would like to persecute in the name of building national unity:
Jews in Germany, Poland, France, Belgium, Holland, and other Nazi-occupied lands, 1930s-1940s
Japanese-Americans in USA, 1940s
.
.
.
Remember that the shiny new FBI building in D.C. was named for J. Edgar Hoover. The same J. Edgar Hoover who ordered FBI spying on Martin Luther King and other civil rights leaders, war protesters, union organizers, and so on.
The fact that this naming took place in the past year or two is evidence enough that the current FBI considers such a record praiseworthy. Those denying this fact are about as convincing as those denying that Georgia's 1950s-vintage state flag with Confederate motifs praises segregation.
I challenge all coders to an encryption software contest! Get a copy of Applied Cryptography or similar (an excellent book) and write some public domain encryption code!!!
Unfortunatly, if the pgp stuff is removed from sites in the countries involved in Wassanaar, people outside of the US (and possibly within) will have trouble getting recent pgp revisions (I'm glad I save my tarballs). This idea works great as long as encryption software isn't being removed from the web. A more direct approach needs to be taken (as in NatePuri's omnipages.com) as well.
Hey thats interesting, I read a letter from Bill Clinton asking all Wassanaar nations to remove people from office that look like Janet Reno.
Maybe she's mad.
Is it just me or does anyone else find the fact she used the word regime a bit disconerting ? For once I will not jump into the obvious debate about political parties that can spring from this kind of article. I find it ver disturbing that she would say either because the software is in the "public domain"... when the agreement in reference soes not cover that software. This whole line of reasoning coming from our government today has me pretty paranoid.
My question is with products like PGP available can they really stop this from getting inot the hands of the masses ? Making it illeagle would not hold up in court nor would it be enforceable. The fact that they would like to try bothers me more than anything else.
My 3 cents worth
Well, even if you personally don't think you have anything to hide, or that privacy matters much, there is always the possibility of a snowball effect here.
First it's our privacy, who is to say what they'll want next?
Top 10 documents Janet Reno DOES still want encrypted:
DISCLAIMER: I'm making the following list all up. Please, government people, don't come do bad things to me. I'm just kidding. Really.
10) Secret love letters to Regis Philbin
9) Details of her high school post prom party, where she engaged in inappropriate relations with a llama,as written in a letter to a friend
8) All memoes regarding the "incident" where Ms. Reno accidentally left a pair of kneepads in the Oval Office
7) Memo condoning chinese water torture for Kevin Mitnick
6) Request card from PC Magazine placing an order for the book "Internet Access for Dummies"
5) logfiles from 75 Anonymous Coward "First Posts" to Slashdot, dated several hours after delivery of book mentioned above
4) Hotel receipts indicating preference for in-room hardcore pornography movies featuring men with three testicles
3) Letter from Al Gore thanking her for looking the other way
2) Letter from Bill Gates telling her "no, you have to push the start button in the lower left corner first"
1) All documentation related to failed top-secret cosmetic surgery experiements she was involved with in the seventies that went horribly, horribly wrong.
DISCLAIMER: I'm making the following list all up. Please, government people, don't come do bad things to me. I'm just kidding. Really.
do my replys to this post constantly get nuked? commie bastards :)
lalal jdhsajkhksa
Even worse, J.Reno didn't send the letter to the ministry of commerce, but to the 'legal department', where it doesn't belong.
The commerce guys are obviously against it...
The biggest thing that puzzles me is how encryption is defined.
Isn't compiling a C++ program a form of encryption?
Isn't any sort of data compression a form of encryption?
Is ANYTHING that mutates data from the original a form of encryption?
How can they even begin to draw the line? Ban any product that claims to be an encryption engine (simple solution: don't claim that! Say its a program that generates a customized compression scheme for you and the other party)
Save ROT13!!!
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
:)
9 U+0OehDWsnfST3/9
Hash: SHA1
Foo!
That's just totally evil. As a protest, this is signed using GnuPG - properly
GPL'd and everything
Restricting everyone's right to communicate in any fashion they like is
basically assuming everyone's guilty until proven innocent, which sucks.
~PigleT
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v0.9.8 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: For info see http://www.gnupg.org
iEYEARECAAYFAjeh5wcACgkQh3MeQyZWueRh+wCeJfrfIVL
r+cAnj1Iwfg2WeMPV9tU0dng/5pRMBHD
=t61T
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
~Tim
--
~Tim
--
Rushing on down to the circle of the turn
You miss the whole point with your literal minded interpretation of a few sentences.
The point is that you can't compartmentalize the willingness to surrender one's privacy and self respect in the workplace from doing so generally.
It will not work.
And further that the government is no worse than corporations in disrespecting rights. Somehow people get the idea that "government" is the enemy - the intruder. It may often be true that government is abusive and totalitarian or that agencies get out of control, but at least in the US more control over people's live is exercised by corporations, and their intentions ar not good.
All this talk means nothing so long as intelligent people surrender their humanity on a daily basis for high-paying jobs that contribute nothing to society but build up a repressive infrastructure with technology, usually. The exceptions in the high tech / software industry are very few.
That comes at a cost. Loss of your humanity and your ability to even realize what you are doing while you harbor illusions about where the real source of the oppression might be. The real source of the "1984" scenario is the willingness and even eagerness of so many people to surrender to totalitarianism forces for a "secure" future and to retire at age 35 as millionaires.
You can't take it with you.
The govt's new policies they introduced over the last week on encryption and net watching.... They really make me angry.
If they get their way, their internet spying would be the equivalent of opening and reading every letter I mail through USPS, and listening and recording every phone call, cell call, page, or fax I make.
Just because its easy for them to spy on my actions over the net doesn't make it right. The problem is the public at large is totally uneducated about this. If we explained that it is real similar to reading letters and listening to phone calls the public would coredump in their pants.
This is disgusting. Its clear to me that Reno and the govt really hates the public at large. Get rid of encryption on the net and you kill business on the net. Get rid of business on the net and ruin an important part of the future economy and our lives.
The occupation powers signed an agreement in 1990 that relinquished their rights as wartime victors and occupiers. This was done to allow the re-unification of Germany to proceed.
There is a great page on encryption regulation,
which currently hosts an electronic petition for the new encryption reform bill moving through congress at http://www.cdt.org/crypto/.
Go sign it
Wassenaar does allow for public domain encryption software to be freely distributed.
Reno wants the special clause allowing this to be removed.
This is a pretty simple issue; the set of people against encryption in the government are power mongers who think the government is bigger, better, and more powerful than the people it serves. Since they are somewhat in control of this body which is so great and powerful, it gives them a power trip. This is completely inappropriate.
The logic behind encryption law is absolutely stupid. There are many more common ways of hiding evidence that the government should be worried about. What are we going to do, ban all toilets since they provide a method of getting rid of your drug evidence? What criminal is going to encrypt his or her evidence anyway? Why not just erase it?
You know, I've been considering the platforms for various parties, and there really isn't one that could be considered "moderate." All of them are too extreme in some manner or another. On one end, of course, there's the Green party, Libertarians, and anarchists. On the other you have Communists, totalitarians, reactionaries, and the religious right.
Even Democrats and Republicans are extreme, though not as extreme as most of the others. And that "reform party" is just as bad.
Even in other nations, the parties are the same general way. Sure, they go by different names, but no political party has its head screwed on quite right. It's just a matter os differences in where the extremities occur.
What we need is a "Common-Sense Party," for lack of a better term. Or perhaps a better name would be "Technologist Party." Something which places strong values on personal freedom and works to ensure it while striking a real balance between personal freedom and governmental authority (in other words, a balance which is even between the two, rather than tipped too far towards either end, which all the political parties I've seen are). I think it's a possibility.
Major issues include:
1) The free (as in unimpeded, not as in gratis) flow of information is crucial to today's society in a world where knowledge is rapidly becoming more valuable than gold. This has implications for encryption, education, and the media (particularly censorship). Free-speech issues are also included here.
2) Personal privacy is a vital aspect of personal freedom. This one also has implications for encryption.
3) Free will is the vehicle which drives humanity forward and keeps us together even through the toughest times. Note, however, that the right to free will does not include the right to infringe upon the free will or other rights of anyone else. This has implications on censorship as well as other issues. Note that, of course, free will includes free speech.
Anyone else care to expand on this? Comments? Anything?
Encryption Scrambles a message so that it is unreadable without the key to unscramble it.
Compiling a C program translates a human readable language into a machine readable language (which some humans who don't have a life can still read)
There are ways to unscramble even an encrypted key if you throw enough processing power at the problem. However, if you provide a complex enough key the computers available at your current point in time won't have enough calculation powerto be able to crack your code before your grandchildren are old or next Tuesday if they get lucky.
The big fuss here is that the U.S. and a few other governments want all encryption algorithms available to the public to have a second key that the Government can use to read any message. While the public would hopefully be protected from other members of the non Government part of society by the encryption provided by their personal key.
The U.S. Government is of course assuming that all people within the government are now and always will be beyond corruption and would never use information gained for insiderish trading, political mudtosling, witch hunting..........
The U.S. Govenment is of course assuming that the people outside the goverment may try to achieve SUBVERSIVE rights such as privacy.
It is somewhat redundant to mention that the U.S. Government would only use a single key encryption system internally so that nobody outside would know what they were doing with information gained by their snooping.
If you would like an entertaining way to get some of the basics about encryption and it's history then I would suggest that you read Neal Stephenson's novel CRYPTONOMICON. I only got my copy the other day and I'm only up to page 98 of 918. It's a good read so far. Not quite as hillariously funny as his first novel SnowCrash. but if you like either of these then you will also enjoy Zodiac.)
ALSO: You could try to confuse them by sending complete gibberish. Unfortunately they would probablly succeed in decrypting it and believe it.
Don't you realize that Janet only wants to "protect the children?" The only problem with Janet is that her idea of "protecting" someone is to douse them with CS cut with methylene chloride, then burn them to death.
Sometimes I think this is all part of some grand conspiracy, sometimes I have to chalk it up to stupidity on a grand scale. I lean towards "stupidity" on this one--anyone who honestly believes that crypto can be stopped, or even regulated, is braindead.
slashdot broke my sig
Nobody who believes the people ought to be free could stand to be married to such a censorious bitch.
Agreed; last time we tried to pick the better from the two parties we got just the sort of fascist we were hoping to avoid. If the Democrats manage to find an actual liberal who the masses might like, the US still stands a chance, otherwise it's time to flee this police state before the razorwire about our necks is pulled tight.
She's writing to her counterpart in Germany. Such contacts are quite normal, quite usual, quite common - hardly as extraordinary as you (and other slashdotters) make them out to be.
Read a major newspaper regularly; you'll see some kind of reporting on some kind of high-level international contacts nearly every day.
--
There is no premature anti-fascism. -Ernest Hemingway
Give me a teabag and a train ticket to Boston
A Government can only keep secrets from its own people.
~ ^~~~^~~^~
A measure of how dis-satisfied people are with their government, is...
1) The level of armament of the police
2) The need for a government to "know what its people are up to."
lecture...
The movie "Untouchables" makes a very good point about how the police were representing the federal government, but everyone was *in essence* supporting a different government.
Even then, Al Capone's ledger book was encrypted. Why did Al Capone feel like he couldn't trust the Government with a knowledge of his buisness doings? Becuase the government was so corrupt that they were ready to squash such privacy for its own preservation. Remember how he even payrolled government officials? He was certainly an active supporter of the federal government.
Now obviously that is a little tongue in cheek, but it does point out how this issue is not very resolvable in a debate. Yet the solution is very clear. What keeps Open source so secure? Because it is open, and people can look for daggers so easily.
But even more than that there is participation. People are looking for daggers in software they want to use. Ever dream of working for the Air Force, just to find out if something is happening in Area 51? Ever want to work for the UN to get in on all the secrets that are passed there?
Why do we feel that we need to conceal what we are doing from the government? Why does the Government feel it needs to conceal from us? I think more participation is the best way to expose what is going on to sunlight, and as Learned Hand once said, "Sunlight is the best disinfectant."
^~~^~^^~~^~^~^~^^~^^~^~^~~^^^~^^~
Unfortunately, I think the U.S. government is still for the people. We are strongly against crypto restrictions, and for good reason. But ask the average person on the street; if they even know what cryptography is, they will be completely apathetic. So it goes.
"...remove access to all encryption software from the internet as she believes such access renders the Wassanaar agreement impotent."
I think that comment is impotent. Great way to waste more of our tax dollars, not to mention sending us further down the road to total government control. Oooooppps...maybe I shouldn't have said that...they've probably read this and are now on their way in those silent black helicopters....
----------------
"Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds." - Albert Einstein
Co-founder and designer at Music Nearby: http://musicnearby.com
The thought of our government regulating privacy policy makes about as much sense as Bill Clinton regulating the National Blow Job Policy. They would get it all and we'd get none. Scary.
-------------------------------------------------
I wouldn't even know where to begin a reply to the above. Whatever point the previous person missed (as you claim) is of no importance considering what you've missed. Your comments show complete lack of knowledge about the proper extent of government and individual rights within a proper government. I'm not sure what your political beliefs are, but they have definitely nothing to do with a society where people would not "surrender" their "humanity" each day.
Not everything you read on the internet is true. There's no proof that Janet Reno wrote the letter, other than the "reliable source, no really, trust us" note at the end.
Face it, it's not going to be better under George W. Bush either. He'll hand the keys to our individual rights faster than Clinton.
What we need is a dual citizen of both the US and Europe to sue the US govt and get us the same privacy rights as the Europeans have.
Anybody want to do that?
Will in Seattle
This is a bunch of crap. There is no way that the government can tell you that you can't use Public Encryption! That's like telling me I can't have locks on my doors so anyone can come in a take all my computer equipment. This is a bunch on bull. I will get so pissed if the government slips this one in. They are really telling the computer users to bend over and hold their ankles waiting for a truck to drive up your a** recently! I really hope that this is just some kind of joke! Otherwise I am going to take over the country, bunch of bastards!
However there is something beyond concealment that I call privacy. There are simply things I don't think people need to see or hear about my life. However, even so I hope to deal with those things in such a manner that if they did, they wouldn't think I was horrible, stupid or even perverted.~ ^~~^~
^~~^~^^~~^~^~^~^^~^^~^~^~~^^^~^^~~^~~
i would vote for Cthulhu but dont know if the stars are right... and i like R.U. SIRIUS's idea of making marlyn manson drug czar. there's just chemistry there. what kind i dont know...
nmarshall
#include "standard_disclaimer.h"
R.U. SIRIUS: THE ONLY POSSIBLE RESPONSE
nmarshall
The law is that which it boldly asserted and plausibly maintained..
--Colonel Burr 1783
Sure, just take away any and all encryption from the net. Who needs secure ecommerce, anyway?
Janet Reno's Dance Party (on SNL)...kinda forcing the people to dance with her, get my drift? shes a control freeak, like every other elected official...power mongers, each and every one of em
"There is no spoon" - Neo, The Matrix
The National Slashdot Service has issued a JonKatz warning effective for the next 48 hours. Today, Slashdot Service radar identified an article about encryption and government regulation of the internet posted on slashdot. The JonKatz essay is expected to follow as soon as he can get MS Word running.
Readers are advised to TAKE COVER IMMEDIATELY. If you have not enabled your Katz filter, it is recommended that you do so now.
JonKatz essays are highly dangerous. They may contain heavy pretentiousness, strong ill-informed opinions, and pea-brain-sized reasoning. They often result in flooding of the slashdot server. Do not attempt to use slashdot during a JonKatz attack.
This warning has been posted as humor. This concludes this warning. We now return you to regular posting.
No, but you raise an important issue - they might well propose some totally ridiculous, draconian scheme in the knowledge that they won't get it, but then offer to "compromise" with a slightly less horrible, but still pretty awful scheme, which the public will then perceive as an improvement. Smart people don't fall for this, but there's lots of stupid people in the world.
Personally, I'm making sure to distribute strong encryption software as much as possible, but I'm not in the US anyway...
Choice of masters is not freedom.
Not really related to encryption, but I have a copy of The Onion's "Our Dumb Century". It's a collection of..uhm...front pages from the Onion for the past 100 years. On the front page for July 10, 1974, one article reads:
NSC Orders Freedom Of Information Act Sealed for 50 years.
Course, there's another headline that reads:
CIS denies CIA founding.
"....don't you know that you can count me out...IN....." (clue- check the White Album version)
Key escrow is a joke anyhow. Look to the statistics on wire taps, and you can see how badly this stuff will be abused. Last year there were what, 3 wire taps that were turned down by judges.
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But this is just as loony as most other controls on cryptography (and here I include Wassenaar).
Given the ease that material on cryptography is moved in and out of any national boundary, it seems that this is more of a club in the belt of any nation than a practical piece of trade legislation.
More to the point, given that corporations can't risk that the club be used, it is a serious burden to accessibility of encryption - merely because of the risk that someone from overseas might take a copy from their servers. It'll never hurt people who are very serious about encryption (who can read the literature on the subject and write applications for themselves). Whom it will hurt are users of encryption, such as companies selling over the net; browser/client manufacturers; a whole lot of joe averages everywhere, most of whom won't even come close to breaking those laws against distribution of encryption.
--
There is no premature anti-fascism. -Ernest Hemingway
So I have submitted things and they never get posted. Next time you submit look at the number of pending submissions or something like that. That will give you some clue that you may not be the first.
The death of one man is a tragedy; the death of a million is a statistic --Joseph Stalin
It is becoming increasingly evident that we must do something to stop the proliferation of personal automobiles.
It is not our intent to halt an individual's transportation rights, there already exists several means of transportation for individuals, such as the horse.
Personal automobiles are a threat to the public security, as they allow terrorists to rapidly move about with concealed packages (such as heavy weapons or even a thermonuclear bomb).
As you can see, this threat cannot be allowed to continue. It is time to purge our country of these risky machines!
It is becoming increasingly evident that we must do something to stop the proliferation of personal encryption.
It is not our intent to halt an individual's communication rights, there already exists several means of communication for individuals, such as the text.
Personal encryption programs are a threat to the public security, as they allow terrorists to rapidly discuss obscured plans (such as for heavy weapons or even a thermonuclear bomb).
As you can see, this threat cannot be allowed to continue. It is time to purge our country of these risky programs!
Uh, hello, anyone home? The car is out of the garage, everybody knows how to build one, you can't stuff it back in the garage!
"Flame away, I wear asbestos underwear"
Allow me to play paranoid conspiracy theorist for one moment. Let's say that, despite common opinion, They(tm) control the vertical and the horizontal when it comes to encryption. Yes, even PGP. It might be in Their(tm) best interest to play up the "danger" of cryptography in order to make those who are of interest to Them(tm) secure in the thought that they're uncrackable, when they're really an open book.
Just a thought.
I think what we need is some sort of package for transparently combining multiple, strong algorithms into a really obnoxious crypt filter, with a nice GUI for using it on files. Not just an email/file package, but an engine with hooks to series of crypt filter-modules, that could be used on anything from filesystems to tcp streams. And possibly make it available as some sort of loadable kernel module. So a key isn't just a key, but a sequence of key/algorithm-id pairs. Obviously, this wouldn't be good for public-key use, but I'd use it; I'm right into obnoxious encryption. Actually, I think there's enough sauce in the gnome libs to get a quick start to this for gnome.
Key escrow essentially renders encryption useless. As long as *somebody* besides you and the person you are communicating with has a copy of the key, that somebody could use it for all the right reasons or all the wrong. Quite simply, there's nobody I trust enough to have the responsibility of making sure it's always the right reasons. And if I were to make a list of large organizations and the trust I give them, I assure you the US govt and any corporations/organizations that work closely with it are nowhere near the top of that list.
"That's Tron. He fights for the Users."
How far do you think most Free Software would be without electronic distribution.
Quite the competative advantage to unethical companies, you can only get crypto on a nice shiny CD, probaly binary only full of backdoors, and there won't be ANYTHING you can do about it
When did the US gov stop being for the people?
Is it just me or have our rights been under attack (news coming out) in the last few days?
Control, control, control....that's the mantra of the gov't - or so it seems. This quote from the Reno letter really sums it up for me:
"While I recognize that this issue is controversial, unless we address this situation, use of the Internet to distribute encryption products will render Wassenaar's controls immaterial."
In other words, we don't have control here - the 'net - and all our fine speeches and multi-lateral accords mean dick. I find this both refreshing and worrying. Refeshing in that the 'net can pull and end-run on gov't stupidity; worrying 'cause some of the gov't airheads realize this.
"shop smart:shop s-mart" ash
Cool ;)
The U.S. government's job since the beginning of our fore-fathers has been to oversee the nation as a whole and not interfere in the private actions of its citizens. The U.S. government needs to step back, take a breath, and rethink what they're doing. As many good things the government does, you have to wonder about those times when they do something wrong.
Rajiv Varma
It is the law abiding people that they are supposedly trying to protect that are going to pay the price for this.
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Janet Reno is going to have a few issues then with Canada's crytography policy. The following is taken from an Industry Canada web site:
Canada's Cryptography Policy
Summary of Canada's Cryptography Policy
MINISTER MANLEY OUTLINES CANADIAN CRYPTOGRAPHY POLICY
OTTAWA, October 1, 1998 -- John Manley, Minister of Industry, today announced the elements of Canada's Cryptography Policy. Cryptography is a set of technologies used to provide security for electronic transmissions and of information stored on computer systems and networks such as the Internet. This policy is an essential component of the Canadian Electronic Commerce Strategy, designed to make Canada a world leader in the use of electronic commerce by the year 2000.
The policy allows Canadians to develop, import and use whatever cryptography products they wish and does not impose mandatory key recovery requirements or a licensing regime. "This policy is good for the Canadian economy," said Minister Manley. "It supports the increased use of electronic commerce products and services in Canada, as well as the export of Canadian information technologies to other countries."
hey,
/. a person could run for office and share the responsibility of leadership with the people. Lets say our geek is in congress and a proposal like the many we have seen recently is brought forth. The geek with his notebook instantly provides the info to his people and they discuss and vote on it. Obviously not everyone can spend all their time watching discussions and voting, but we all have friends who's opinions on these matters we agree with. If our voting responsibility could be temporarily given to one or more people who will have the time to follow the discussion our voice can be heard without constant shouting. Furthurmore many issues will be clear cut enough to be prevoted upon. A little checkbox that says "vote against all expansion of government power" would suffice for me.
I think the reason that so many of these big-brotherish laws and proposals are being suggested and sometimes passed is obvious. Our system of election is outmoded by technology. In my idealistic opinion technology (roughly defined by me as tools for improved communication)should be used not to subvert the population, but to enpower the population. It certainly is not. The Technology/Knowledge fronteir is being divied up just like the old west. Just as the native Americans were appalled at the idea of land ownership, so too are we of code ownership.
Our current governmental structure is a lot like Windows. Its based on ancient technology patched over by a million hands with a million different ideas of what it should do. We need a way to be heard and the power not to be ignored. Else we will find the net divided and large parts of it unsafe from the whims of the corporate owned government.
Here is my simple suggestion conceived not by a politician but a hacker:
Elect geeks with discussion forums and online voting systems. Using no more technology than we have at our disposal on
The obvious problems with my proposal are security and economic availability. I'm no crypto expert, but based only on how scared the government and corporations are of strong crypto I hope I am not wrong in assuming that it would be possible to positively identify a valid voter and prevent ballot box stuffing.
As for the 50% of the population that isn't on the net, it seems that one day soon a simple internet access device will be within the budget of anyone.
I like this idea:) I don't see why some hip place like berkeley, ca couldnt elect someone with this system soon, but I won't bet on it. For too long we have been controlled and as much as we talk about freedom I haven't seen any drastic action on our part.
Michael@elvisteacup.com
PS- I am in the research stages of writing a work of fiction involving this and many of my other whacky ideas. A work which I will GPL. I would love to chit chat with anyone interested in making this a reality or telling me why it can't be.
1)I don't know who the ambassador to Germany is but I would not be suprised if it was a political hack who got the position as a reward for supporting the President dueing the election. Basically a figure head.
2) Did we ever sign a peace treaty with Germany?
It seems to me I read somewhere we had not, due to its divided status. If so, that makes it an occupied nation and The US can do whatever we please...
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
I agree that although this isn't a serious threat right this minute, we do need to stop this before it's gets bigger. A quote comes to mind, "The greatest threats to liberty are those who impose their ideas on others by force, and those who stand by and let them..." I just don't know what I can do, besides guard my copies of PGP. Any good ideas???
Remember the Boston Tea Party? The colonists were under incredibly strict and unhuman laws that stripped them of their rights. What did they do? Chucked a bunch of crates of tea out into the ocean, even though it was blatantly illegal.
I believe there comes a point when citizens must take the Constitution at its face value, as it was meant to be, and take measures against senseless government totalitarianism.
Now, this doesn't mean scalping copies of Microsoft stuff--people are trying to make a valid living off that--but if encryption software can only be found on underground warez sites, then that's where we'll all have to go.
We have the right to privacy, to free speech, and anonymity. Do what you can, where you can, but just don't let this slide.
Can't sleep, the clowns will eat me...
I've always likened the need for encryption to our present use of curtains. Here's a little spin to demonstrate why.
s/encryption/curtains/g;
s/cryptography/opaque window/g;
s/software/fabric/g;
s/cryptographic/woven/g;
s/strength/opacity/g;
s/electronic/low-cost/g;
s/Internet/counter/g;
s/intangible/privacy-enabling/g;
Dear Minister Däubler-Gmelin:
I wish to thank you and your Government for you efforts to achieve a fair resolution regarding multilateral export controls on curtains products at the recent Wassenaar plenary session on December 2-3, 1998. While no Nation, including the United States, was completely satisfied, I think we made significant progress toward a regime that can support the interests of national security and public safety in the face of the challenges posed by the increasing use of curtains internationally. Given the divergent opaque window policies that the Wassenaar Nations have supported in the past, and the continuing controversy that opaque window policy continues to generate, that 33 Nations managed to find common ground augurs well for our future ability to find solutions that satisfy the divergent needs of privacy, low-cost commerce, national security, and public safety.
Much work remains to be done. In particular, I believe we must soon address the risks posed by low-cost distribution of curtains fabric. Although the Wassenaar Nations have now reached agreement to control the distribution of mass market curtains fabric of certain woven opacity, some Wassenaar Nations continue not to control curtains fabric that is distributed over the counter, either because the fabric is in the "public domain" or because those Nations do not control distribution of privacy-enabling items. While I recognize that this issue is controversial, unless we address this situation, use of the counter to distribute curtains products will render Wassenaar's controls immaterial.
I look forward to our continuing discussions on these and other issues. And again, thank you for your past and future considerations of these issues.
Sincerely, Janet Reno
--
...you get the idea.
--The more you know, the less you know.
Go check out CipherSaber. If crypto is outlawed, we'll just have to write our own crypto software from memory :-)
But in the letter she says:
Very different.
I would bet that the latter more accuratly shows the policy of the DOJ.
Is not strong and trusted encryption software built by the open and free flow of ideas. How strong would the encryption be that is available to everyone but the governments if there was no electronic distribution?
Check out the Lance Armstrong Foundation
kayaking
Go third party, folks. That's if Dubya gets the nom. He's a Republican version of Clinton. Pthua!
Taking no action for sure will get you GWB, cuz Algore is a sure loser (and mini-Clinton).
Looks fake to me, but let's assume it's real..
:-)
This is no news. All it really says is, "hey, we better enforce the laws we make, or they don't mean shit," basically. The Wassenar agreement puts restrictions on exporting crypto. If they don't enforce it, you are free to export to your heart's delight.
My problem isn't with the enforcement of the restrictions, rather, I have a problem with the restrictions themselves. Therefore this letter means nothing of any importance.
Short of someone completely taking their country off the internet, this kind of thing is utterly unenforcable anyway. Get over it people. It's just one more thing for them to nail you with if they ever catch you for something more important.
Besides, everyone _already_ has the crypto. Banning export of high power crypto is like banning export of air. It just floats out of the country on it's own, and you can't stop it.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
"Jail Time for Users of Crypto", "Tax Break for Key Escrow Crypto".
No need to say anything.
The internet has caused quite a sensation!
One these sensations is loss of power.
The answer will not be which party you vote for.
The answer to this problem will be whether or not your configure your network properly. To do that one's network of computers (and friends) must span the globe. Servers must be colocated. Encryption strong and ubiquitous. The freedom fighters of the 21st Century put down the gun, got an alias and started networking for their own security.
ompages.com is an example. It' not the answer to everything, it is an attempt to model the next society. It will come.
Clinton or Dole or Bush - it would make no difference. This kind of measures enjoy bipartisan
support. And it will continue to be until we
quitely swallow this nonsence.
Ya know, i'd be willing to let them ban encryption IF it was illegal for them to use it as well AND if they consented to letting US monitor all THEIR traffice (military included).
However, since they will give some 'National Security' BS, and wouldn't follow any of the laws if that happened anyways, then we have every right to encrypt whatever we want.
Check out ompages.com. I've worked on some papers that explain what the problem is and how to fix it.
People are signing up to help everday. Mirrors, applications, web services are coming, and they are going to be free, anonymous, and no advertisements allowed.
This is an open source project so we need help.
Whether you are a hacker, engineer, web designer, writer, are just curious, there is a something to be done.
As you all can tell from this article, the US government is moving at top speed to halt computer security for the masses.
Since the US government is acting fast, so must the rest of us. Don't just mumble and grumble about the loss of your rights, use your skills to claim ownership of your rights.
Only you can prevent totalitarianism. You must act, this war is being fought online and without national borders. Wherever you live, the time is now to counteract censorship, government monitoring and control.
This is not a paranoid delusion; if you think it is, then remain as you are and accept that consequences that are indeed mounting.
I will post messages like this on /. for every article that relates to limits on crypto. Flame me if you want. I can take it....
Ruby Ridge happened in the summer of 1992, BEFORE Clinton was elected and BEFORE Reno was appointed.
In fact Reno was appointed DURING the Waco standoff, so you can blame ruby Ridge and the initial incredibly boneheaded paramilitary-assult-with-cameras-in-tow on George Bush and his appointees. Bush of course was a Republican and for some reason alot people seem to think that the Republicans care more about civil rights than the other lot. People who point to Waco & Ruby Ridge as examples of Clinton & Reno's disregard for civil rights are blaming THE WRONG PEOPLE Blame the GOP if you must blame a political party. The only "civil right" that the GOP care about more than the Democrats is the 2nd amendment. After all its every American's right to defend himself against bad stock market investemnts with a hand gun.
Sounds cool - anyplace in Canada have a good software industry? Iknow this is the great country that gave us OpenBSD and UserFriendly, but that's about all I know (been to Victoria, Whistler, and Calgary too, and I stil don't know)
1) As you do not know you might refrain from making assumptions.
... gee, does it still make people wonder why some are so pissed off at times about the U.S. ? Thank heaven Reno is not THE U.S. ... I think. But all this is ridiculous anyway. Message to the world "You are all arrested", ridiculous.
2) The US can do whatever they please as far as I am concerned and the further away that is the better. Yes, Reno ought to be given the boot and not a golden one. The masters of the universe do neither live in the White House nor anywhere else across the pond
This might be true: I cannot prove otherwise. However, think about these things:
- Janet Reno has nothing to do with foreign policy... why would she write this letter directly to a foreign power? Would it not make more sense to write a letter to some US diplomat who is involved in foreign affairs?
- There is no way to verify that this letter is authentic (meaning from Janet Reno), or that it ever existed.
- This type of situation is screaming "hoax" -- it's the perfect topic for a practical joke: something that is close to the hearts of the tech community and has been heatedly battled over many times before.
As with anything that is unsubstantiated, take it with a grain (or perhaps a cup) of salt. A wise person once said "believe half of what you hear, and only 10% of what you read." That is, without proof...Posted by the Proteus
We may not imagine how our lives could be more frustrating and complex—but Congress can. – Cullen Hightower
Everyone who knows the inners of networks knows perfectly how easy is to eavesdrop any unsecured communication. Every *NIX that respects himself have at least one tool that permits such thing. Some have even a whole artillery inside. Take trinux (www.trinux.org) for example.
However it seems that US DOJ is completely blind to such things. Their will for power is so big that they simply ignore technical specifities, customer interests, public opinion and now diplomatic relations. It is simply amazing how a government body, caring for the justice of its citizens, not only violates their rights but also interferes in the rights of citizens of other countries. DOJ is becoming a danger not only to the national interests of the United States of America but also the whole World.
Apart of this there are two points that turn DOJ activities into a danger of a much broader sense. First is the field they intend to dominate. Encryption is not only an activity but also a scientific and technological field. No one knows what may become tomorrow if they go with this one. They may not only turn Encryption and Signals Encoding scientific fields into a theoretical and technological swamp. Tomorrow someone may well try to shrink the information contained in other fields, turning all Science and Technology into a stalinist dogma. Let us remember that all the crazyness that happenned in USSR during Stalin had started almost the same way. First Economics suffered the first blow. The reasons were quite parallel, in some sense, to DOJ's type of argumentation. Public dessimation of wrong theories about Economy could undermine the hard effort of building the new socialist relationships in the production fields. People would be teached "capitalist" selfish ideas on how to grab others.
All this ended with a weird world where even Darwin was considered a demagogue. Even the founder of modern rocketry in Russia, Korolev had to pass some years in the GULAG. While all these Stalin crazy years didn't last enough to destroy Russian scientific institutes, a lot of its madness echoes even today. Besides, this steel fist on Science fueled a whole set of paranormal extortionists, religious sectants, and criminals of the boo-boo Science, who made their life out of the ignorance of the masses. This was particularly seen on the end of USSR.
But DOJ does not end here. They are starting to act as much as the organs of internal affairs of some totalitarian countries. They now determine what is good or bad for their people. It seems that they are not satisfied to have just The Law behind them. They are excited to get The Truth also.
....
2) Did we ever sign a peace treaty with Germany?
It seems to me I read somewhere we had not, due to its divided status. If so, that makes it an occupied nation and The US can do whatever we please...
...
Read again. Preferably somewhere different than
before, like news-papers from around 10 yrs ago
maybe. But beware, you might learn some recent,
quite important world-history
BTW: the cold war is over (just in case you missed it).
Who sold our secrets to the chinese? The same guy who placed a spy in the justice department? The same guy involved in the arkansas prison tainted blood scandal? Interesting.....
Listen to the truth http://www.warroom.com
Even assuming that all encryption is made illegal
S 8
there is a simple method of making it's use even theoretically completely undetectable.
This makes legislating encryption kind of like passing laws to make gravity illegal. Netsurfer Digest had an item about this chaffing/winnowing technique last year:
http://www.netsurf.com/nsd/v04/nsd.04.10.html#B
I wonder whether steganography (hiding the messages inside of other data) would be in violation of the proposed limitations.
Arieh
-- We have been doing so much with so little for so long, we are now qualified to do anything with nothing.
Well we have to do something. maybe call your rep. or maybe there is a petition or something everyone can sign.
-blar
Mail every senator
Is this appropriate? Or would this just get us all on some kind of list? I'd think if we do what we did with all those other companies to get linux drivers for hardware, with our senators, it may help some...
I'm not sure, what do you all think?
...you must not have read the question very carefully.
No big deal... When encryption software will be removed from Germany, it'll still be available from French servers...
-- ----------------------------------------------
Vive le logiciel... Libre!!!
Clearly this is a fake... right? Please!? Hmmm, perhaps it's time to move.
Great the 80's saw Republican executive branch packing the courts with social/and religious right wingers, the 90's are seeing a Democratic executive branch giving them the tools to really stick it to us.