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This is why my hair stands up every time we have the "backdoored encryption" discussion -- we had, and probably still have, people in positions of power that th
by kyshoc 7y ago
This is why my hair stands up every time we have the "backdoored encryption" discussion -- we had, and probably still have, people in positions of power that think of encryption as something that should be regulated on the order that guided missiles are.
- vmurthy 7y agoAs a technologist, I agree with your view. But in cases like sanctions, I think the "Let me show who has the power" mentality takes over. So, a country (say USA) can pressure its companies (like Microsoft in 1998) to stop providing some features/services/products to have some leverage over the sanctioned country. The unfortunate pattern in history has been that politics wins over rationality.
- pvg 7y agoDo you have some reference to something that suggests that this is what actually happened? I don't think the US government made Microsoft put weak encryption in export versions of IE because India tested a nuke.
- vmurthy 7y agoSorry! I tried so bad to find it but couldn't :-( Someday ..
- pvg 7y agoI think you can't find it because it just didn't happen that way and you're misremembering something. The export-crippled cryptography in browsers was a real thing but it got there before the Indian nuclear test and for other reasons.