5 ms·
Funny story about that: For quite a while the US government considered cryptography, that was too secure, a "controlled munition" [0]. It took a lot of activis
by freeflight 5y ago
Funny story about that: For quite a while the US government considered cryptography, that was too secure, a "controlled munition" [0].
It took a lot of activism to change that and it's something that's still under attack to this day in the form of governments demanding backdoors into all kinds of encrypted communication.
[0] http://www.geekytattoos.com/illegal-tattoos-rsa-tattoos/ http://www.geekytattoos.com/illegal-tattoos-rsa-tattoos/
- hkt 5y agoYou missed the best part of the struggle: how Phil Zimmerman, author of PGP, had to publish his source code in a book so it'd be protected as speech under the first amendment. His alternative was being thrown in prison for a few decades for illegal export of munitions.