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Fair point. I didn't recognize you had such a high level view of "system". But this raises the question whether one can really call these laws "cryptography exp
by Perseids 12y ago
Fair point. I didn't recognize you had such a high level view of "system". But this raises the question whether one can really call these laws "cryptography export restrictions". Because, sure, cryptography is involved, yet the restrictions only apply to (/ are meaningful in regard of) the procedures involved in secure IT systems in general. I'd argue that this expertise is somewhat independent of cryptography, as you can swap the cryptography implementations with any other and the procedures would stay the same.
Even better, leave the cryptography out of the package entirely and just include an "apt-get install" line or a list of open source projects you have to install. Instructions for "cabling, routers, crypto protocols, key generation/escrow/rotation/destruction, fall-back procedures, firewalls, hotglued USB ports, etc." aren't cryptography in themselves, are they?
- DenisM 12y agoFist, it adds more moving parts, making the system more likely to contain a hole, which might be just enough for NSA. Second, consider that typical buyer is a beauracracy, and they are are either buying a crypto system, or the are not buying it. The upgrade might be trivial for you, but a beauracrat has no way of knowing that, so he has to play by the rules. I think they key to scale of the word system is however big it needs to be to establish actual security. You can have perfectly good crypto, but if you're relying on certificate authorities you may be safe from street hackers, but as far as NSA is concerned its wide open. It's just reading tea leaves, of course. I imagine that NSA is not enjoying reading thousands of applications from iOS app devs like me, so if they keep doing it they must be getting something for their effort.