[Cryptography][Law] Jeremy Hammond Banned from using Cryptography

[John Young]

Still, the USA's description of how its Cooperating Witness
(presumably Hector Sabu Monsegur) allegedly induced
Hammond to ply his fine mind and technical skills indicates
that ban on the use of encryption is the least hazard facing
hackers and confrontational comsec wizards:

http://cryptome.org/2013/11/hammond-060.pdf

Self-serving insiders of the comsec industry, black, white or gray,
continue to be the Achilles heel of comsec. Government use of
these trusted allies reminds that it is not only nations who fuck their
friends.

Now, this is not news, but also reminds that protestations of
injustice, outrage and anger, is all too often a conventional cover
for betrayal by cooperating witnesses.

Unfortunately, the same goes for eager participants in payback,
fault correction, workarounds, vengeance, product upgrades to
defeat the bastards. These exact means and methods were
allegedly used by Sabu to ensnare and imprison a batch of
confederates. An ancient practice effectively used on
Julian Assange: followers can be lethal.

Encryption offers squat protection from this kind of legal,
political and social engineering whose history is much
older and more effective than top coding, math, engineering,
ethics and brave challenges to authority. Usually, offer of
an irresistable plea deal, job contract, witness protection,
PR outpouring, turns a valiant outsider into a handsomely
rewarded insider. Mudge one of hundreds, perhaps thousands,
who got the warning message.

Then what to avoid the looming scythes the various Sabus (he is
surely not alone) have provided law enforcement to gradually
take down the opposition, not all at once but in the Snowden-Greenwald
manner, to slowly dribble prosecutions for maximum effect, promising
"much, much more to come?"