Criminalizing crypto criticism

Rick Smith at Secure Computing rick_smith at securecomputing.com
Tue Jul 31 09:31:37 PDT 2001


At 01:13 PM 7/27/2001, Steven M. Bellovin wrote:

>It's certainly not broad enough -- it protects "encryption" research,
>and the definition of "encryption" in the law is meant to cover just
>that, not "cryptography".  And the good-faith effort to get permission
>is really an invitation to harrassment, since you don't have to
>actually get permission, merely seek it.

Hmmm. What would happen if every "legitimate" cryptography researcher 
routinely transmitted an announcement to every vendor of copy protection 
telling them that the researcher was going to be 'researching' the vendor's 
products?

Research is such a wonderful term. I suppose I'm doing some sort of 
"cryptography research" just by looking at the bits that encode some sort 
of protected content. I must guiltily confess that I've been doing security 
long enough that I look with a skeptical eye at every "security 
implementation" I see, even if it's just a security camera or a string of 
barbed wire.

There are probably enough "cryptography researchers" out there that even a 
large vendor won't feel tempted to harass them all proactively.

Rick.




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