If you posses drugs, you're following illegal conduct, and you can be fined or imprisoned. Similarly, if we end up with a government OK'd list of crypto schemes, those of us who use strong crypto legitimately will be criminals. Also, in the UK, you can get charged for not handing over encryption keys.
If you posses drugs, you're following illegal conduct, and you can be fined or imprisoned. Similarly, if we end up with a government OK'd list of crypto schemes, those of us who use strong crypto legitimately will be criminals.
Well, yeah. But you have a right to be tried by a jury of your peers... who probably won't understand crypto. (The "drugs are bad... except coffee and cigarettes and high fructose corn syrup" propaganda caught on pretty well, so you are probably stuck there. But there is no "strong cryptography is bad" rhetoric out there, and it will be hard to argue for -- the opposite is "the government is trying to steal your credit card number".)
Anyway, the whole point of the Constitution was to allow people to do things that the government didn't want them to do. Using strong cryptography is the modern way to for one to "be secure in their persons, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures".
Finally, it seems that this round of laws is directed at service providers that store encrypted messages; the government wants you to be able to read everything passing through your network. Of course, you do not control the P2P network that your movies and phone calls pass through, so this law has limited effect. Even then, if end users provide their own encryption, that's out of the scope of this law.
The government cannot read every packet that passes over the Internet.
But there is no "strong cryptography is bad" rhetoric out there...
How about Tor being used for CP? That's a pretty prevalent and well known argument. Any competent lawyer is going to be able to spin the same argument for strong crypto.
I agree with you on a logical level, I just don't think that's how it plays out in the average voter's/politician's mind. The logical leap between guns and Tor just isn't made in practice.
I feel that this is an issue for the courts rather than the representatives, and the courts are less influenced by Joe Gun-nut than the elected officials he directly elects.
So while surely there will be some new law censoring the Internets, the courts will probably strike it down.
(I mean, are we really going to send people to prison for not upgrading their ssh servers? I doubt it.)
I agree with the sentiment here, but it should just be not illegal. It's sort of like how in China and Iran or Turkey (my home country) certain web sites are banned but people find ways to get around that anyway. Is that how it should be? The banning should not be there in the first place.
Unlike drugs, crypto is something you can make in your own home with freely available materials... at least until they outlaw debuggers... (inserting obligatory right-to-read reference).
