5 ms·

I was living in DC during the first Crypto Wars of the late 1990s and covering them as a reporter (I've since shifted to working on recent.io, of course). It su

by declan 12y ago

I was living in DC during the first Crypto Wars of the late 1990s and covering them as a reporter (I've since shifted to working on recent.io, of course). It sure looks like this will be Crypto Wars II: the Feds Strike Back. From my experience a key question to ask is: What would the eventual law say? Will it make it a federal felony to possess an encrypted phone? Or a federal felony to sell one? The FBI endorsed H.R. 695 the last time around, which would have done the latter. Read it for yourself: "Whoever, after January 31, 2000, sells in interstate or foreign commerce any encryption product that does not include features or functions permitting duly authorized persons immediate access to plaintext or immediate decryption capabilities shall be imprisoned for not more than 5 years, fined under this title, or both..." "After January 31, 2000, it shall be unlawful for any person to manufacture for distribution, DISTRIBUTE, or import encryption products intended for sale or use in the United States, unless that product-- `(1) includes features or functions that provide an immediate access to plaintext capability... requiring any person in possession of decryption information to provide such information to a duly authorized investigative or law enforcement officer..." (http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/cpquery/T?&report=hr108p4&dbname=105& http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/cpquery/T?&report=hr108p4&dbna...) Note the distribution ban above. That would have hit open-source and free software projects. Put another way, implementation details matter. A lot of voters might agree with the general proposition that law enforcement should have a way to snoop on terrorists|child pornographers|drug kingpins. They might not agree that a 14-year HN reader with a forked version of Android|AOSP on Github should go to prison for 20 years because he dared to distribute an unencrypted OS.

diminoten 12y ago
I may be as naive as hell here, but when you go from, "we don't want US citizens selling crypto devices to terrorists" to "Timmy's going to see the inside of a jail cell for 20 years for giving Mark a copy of TailsOS" I just can't see how a judge or jury would let it go that far, and I don't think unintended consequences have ever gotten that bad. It just smacks of fear-mongering. "They'll literally lock up your children!"
- declan 12y ago
  Yep, sorry, you're naive. :) The law != common sense. If a law is on the books, it may be applied broadly, even to Timmy and Mark. That's why it's important to ensure the laws are sensible before they're enacted. Here's one example. Let's say there's a 16-year old girl and a 17-year old boy who are in a consensual dating relationship and, you know, take some racy photos of one other. The photos were taken consensually, not shared with anyone else, and stored only on their own computers/accounts. And let's say they're living in Florida and under state law, they're legally old enough to have sex with each other. It would be fear-mongering to expect that these two happy teenagers would ever be prosecuted and convicted on "child pornography" charges, right? Except they were. And, as I wrote in 2007, a Florida appeals court upheld their criminal conviction: http://news.cnet.com/2100-1030_3-6157857.html http://news.cnet.com/2100-1030_3-6157857.html Yes, sorry, Timmy and Mark, sometimes a judge and jury will let it go that far. Sometimes they will "literally lock up your children..."
  - diminoten 12y ago
    Ah, but that plays into the US's very strange views on sex. It feels like an exception, rather than the general rule.
    - raquo 12y ago
      US has strange views on a lot of things, including the one in question – privacy.
      - diminoten 12y ago
        I don't think the US's views on sex and the US's views on privacy are quite comparable, given the 500 year history that comes with our weird prudishness.
        raquo 12y ago
        Your point, as I understood it, was that jailing children for children pornography is an exception from normal routine because US has strange views on sex. My point is that US views on privacy ("nothing to hide") are also strange (relative to my viewpoint), so that will also be an "exception", and you shouldn't be surprised when these strange views will be applied in the courtroom.
djb_hackernews 12y ago
I find it interesting that on one hand the government is telling a technology company they can't create technology which makes communication private and on the other hand the government is charging the CEO of a tech company[0] for creating technology which removes the privacy from communication.[0] "In the first prosecution of its kind, federal officials said that StealthGenie violated the law by offering the ability to secretly monitor phone calls and other communications in almost real time, something typically legal only for law enforcement." [0] http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/make-of-app-used-for-spying-indicted-in-virginia/2014/09/29/816b45b8-4805-11e4-a046-120a8a855cca_story.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/make-of-ap...
- Shivetya 12y ago
  The state tends to reserve a great many powers for itself that it will not permit the people to have. Congress itself routinely excludes itself from laws it writes with the full cooperation and support of the Administrative branch. It is rare if ever that the Judicial branch steps in because each loves its ability to act outside the law.
arh68 12y ago
Was this part of the first crypto war? [1,2] I must not have been paying attention. It's interesting to me that some claim the software didn't work at all: > Now during all of this Jones and crew simply couldn't get the klutzy software to work. And none other than Mary Jo was brought in from the home team. Rather strange déjà vu. [1] http://cryptome.org/dirty-jones.htm http://cryptome.org/dirty-jones.htm [2] http://cryptome.org/dirty-lantern.htm#readers http://cryptome.org/dirty-lantern.htm#readers

by declan 12y ago

diminoten 12y ago

I may be as naive as hell here, but when you go from, "we don't want US citizens selling crypto devices to terrorists" to "Timmy's going to see the inside of a jail cell for 20 years for giving Mark a copy of TailsOS" I just can't see how a judge or jury would let it go that far, and I don't think unintended consequences have ever gotten that bad. It just smacks of fear-mongering. "They'll literally lock up your children!"

declan 12y ago
Yep, sorry, you're naive. :) The law != common sense. If a law is on the books, it may be applied broadly, even to Timmy and Mark. That's why it's important to ensure the laws are sensible before they're enacted. Here's one example. Let's say there's a 16-year old girl and a 17-year old boy who are in a consensual dating relationship and, you know, take some racy photos of one other. The photos were taken consensually, not shared with anyone else, and stored only on their own computers/accounts. And let's say they're living in Florida and under state law, they're legally old enough to have sex with each other. It would be fear-mongering to expect that these two happy teenagers would ever be prosecuted and convicted on "child pornography" charges, right? Except they were. And, as I wrote in 2007, a Florida appeals court upheld their criminal conviction: http://news.cnet.com/2100-1030_3-6157857.html http://news.cnet.com/2100-1030_3-6157857.html Yes, sorry, Timmy and Mark, sometimes a judge and jury will let it go that far. Sometimes they will "literally lock up your children..."
- diminoten 12y ago
  Ah, but that plays into the US's very strange views on sex. It feels like an exception, rather than the general rule.
  - raquo 12y ago
    US has strange views on a lot of things, including the one in question – privacy.
    - diminoten 12y ago
      I don't think the US's views on sex and the US's views on privacy are quite comparable, given the 500 year history that comes with our weird prudishness.
      - raquo 12y ago
        Your point, as I understood it, was that jailing children for children pornography is an exception from normal routine because US has strange views on sex. My point is that US views on privacy ("nothing to hide") are also strange (relative to my viewpoint), so that will also be an "exception", and you shouldn't be surprised when these strange views will be applied in the courtroom.

djb_hackernews 12y ago

I find it interesting that on one hand the government is telling a technology company they can't create technology which makes communication private and on the other hand the government is charging the CEO of a tech company[0] for creating technology which removes the privacy from communication.[0] "In the first prosecution of its kind, federal officials said that StealthGenie violated the law by offering the ability to secretly monitor phone calls and other communications in almost real time, something typically legal only for law enforcement." [0] http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/make-of-app-used-for-spying-indicted-in-virginia/2014/09/29/816b45b8-4805-11e4-a046-120a8a855cca_story.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/make-of-ap...

Shivetya 12y ago
The state tends to reserve a great many powers for itself that it will not permit the people to have. Congress itself routinely excludes itself from laws it writes with the full cooperation and support of the Administrative branch. It is rare if ever that the Judicial branch steps in because each loves its ability to act outside the law.

arh68 12y ago

Was this part of the first crypto war? [1,2] I must not have been paying attention. It's interesting to me that some claim the software didn't work at all: > Now during all of this Jones and crew simply couldn't get the klutzy software to work. And none other than Mary Jo was brought in from the home team. Rather strange déjà vu. [1] http://cryptome.org/dirty-jones.htm http://cryptome.org/dirty-jones.htm [2] http://cryptome.org/dirty-lantern.htm#readers http://cryptome.org/dirty-lantern.htm#readers