With regard to:

Hewlett-Packard Granted License For Encryption System

The Commerce Department has granted Hewlett-Packard an export license for its VerSecure encryption architecture... The catch is that the products must take their orders from a central computer...will dictate how...products will behave in each country.

No fucking way!

The company hopes that the solution would break the deadlock between the Clinton Administration...and the computer industry...

"The company hopes that its solution of a gun that will shoot forward in jurisdictions that allow possession of firearms and backward in jurisdictions that prohibit same will break the deadlock between overweening, self-inflated, scum-sucking, dog-fucking, shit-brained totalitarians and those seeking nothing more than to be LEFT THE FUCK ALONE." Whores! Two-dollar whores! 25-cent whores! HP can stick its encryption card and everything else it makes straight up its mercenary ass. HP just created a powerful incentive for a lot of very capable and creative people to see to it that HP products don't exactly shine in the marketplace, if you get my drift.

The new solution effectively disconnects the problem of distributing encryption technology from the process of determining the policy for government access to information.

Wonderful! That's like selling nerve gas that calls Washington to ask permission before it deploys. Stupid, stupid, STUPID fucking assholes!

The heart is a new class of trusted hardware cards and chips that take their orders from a central company known as a Security Domain Authority or SDA. In countries like France that require people to keep a record of keys for unlocking data, the SDA would only allow the computers to encrypt information if it complied with the laws.

The communists were right on one point. Capitalists will sell them the rope that will be used to hang them. And hang their children. Stupid, stupid, STUPID!

In countries with no laws about encryption usage like the United States, Germany and Great Britain, the SDA would allow users to encrypt in whatever manner they choose.

Yeah, _today_. And what about _tomorrow_, you astronomical fuckwits? What about when the USG decides that with this neat mechanism in place they will just advise Slavery Central that citizen-units in the US may no longer encrypt things "in whatever manner they choose?" Names. We need names publicized. Who thought of this monstrous product? Who approved it? Who developed it? Who signed off on it, saying, "Yeah, this will really make our stockholders proud! Who gives a shit if their kids and grandchildren live under the iron fist of a U.S. technocratic dictatorship? We're gonna score a few points here, make a little extra bonus this year, lock it in with a couple of patents... Who cares if we all end up with brainchip implants?"

Hewlett-Packard sees the solution as a win for the industry, which will be able to build one set of hardware and software that can be shipped throughout the world. The SDA's will set the local rules because the computers will not encrypt information without first getting permission from the SDA.

This is too abominable for words. It's the ultimate sell-out. I know now that there is no hope, not even a spark of the flame of freedom to illuminate the gloom into which we are headed. What's the use of being a well-behaved citizen-unit when this kind of utter shit is afoot or underfoot? It's war. It's always been war, we just haven't understood that it was war. The other side has understood it from the start.

Doug McGowan, one of the director of Hewlett-Packard's efforts, said in a telephone interview, "Never before has a general purpose cryptography tool been exportable from the United States, with or without key recovery. We're opening a huge market for American industry to enable commerce on a worldwide basis."

!!! Some justification, eh Doug? Hey Doug! When they ask for cerebral implants that explode on command, will you offer a similar product that checks with Citizen Control Central before detonating, to make sure the target is in a country that authorizes it? "Hey, no problem!" says Doug. "Our new CerebSecure will only explode heads in countries like Iran, Iraq, Cuba, and North Korea when people attempt to make unauthorized purchases with its electronic purse feature. In countries with no laws about political or religious transactions like the United States, Germany^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H and Great Britain, the SDA would allow users to purchase in whatever manner they choose."

The price for this flexibility is the need for specialized hardware that treats the SDA as its master. In an ordinary computer, the owner can control all aspects of what the computer does. This extra hardware will raise the price of machines and is bound to be more expensive than software which can be distributed at minimal cost.

Yeah, this is just the kind of thing that Americans, even with their severly dulled sense of freedom, will run right out to buy! Sure. First we can expect to see the feds mandate this for all government purchases, then at some point mandate the chipset for all computers, then outlaw encryption that doesn't use the chipset. And I don't even own a crystal ball anymore!

Feisal Mosleh [said], "...It...gives us a lot of strength in terms of tamper resistance."

OK, I give up. Where is the tamper resistance for the Constitution? Is anybody working on that? HEL-lo???? <deathly still silence> FuckWithMeMongerII