Allow me to play "Devil's Advocate" for a minute and not offend anyone.
Pretend I'm a terrorist. I'm not stupid. I know that my phone calls and e-mail are being scanned by computers for key words. What do I do? I use encryption, strong encryption.
Now the U.S. government figures out one day that I'm evading them with this technology. So they put in back doors.
Do you think I'm stupid enough to start using that encryption?
Instead I'm going to keep on using my old software that didn't have backdoors. Lets just suppose I lost that software or I start my "career" in terrorism after real encryption is banned. Do I:
a) Give up being a terrorist.
b) Plan my terrorist acts without encryption
or
c) Dig around the internet underground for "illegal" encryption software.
The point I'm trying to make is that banning good encryption won't work because it will still be available through illegal means. I'm glad they backed down on a law that would hurt businesses who use this technology to properly protect their customers, take away privacy from regular people, and not actually make a difference in the war on terrorism.
Slashdot Mirror
Allow me to play "Devil's Advocate" for a minute and not offend anyone.
Pretend I'm a terrorist. I'm not stupid. I know that my phone calls and e-mail are being scanned by computers for key words. What do I do? I use encryption, strong encryption.
Now the U.S. government figures out one day that I'm evading them with this technology. So they put in back doors.
Do you think I'm stupid enough to start using that encryption?
Instead I'm going to keep on using my old software that didn't have backdoors. Lets just suppose I lost that software or I start my "career" in terrorism after real encryption is banned. Do I:
a) Give up being a terrorist.
b) Plan my terrorist acts without encryption
or
c) Dig around the internet underground for "illegal" encryption software.
The point I'm trying to make is that banning good encryption won't work because it will still be available through illegal means. I'm glad they backed down on a law that would hurt businesses who use this technology to properly protect their customers, take away privacy from regular people, and not actually make a difference in the war on terrorism.