The software was classed as munitions and one needed an arms dealer’s license to publish it, including online. The creator of PGP published the full source code as a book, as these are covered under first amendment rights.
The software was classed as munitions and one needed an arms dealer’s license to publish it, including online. The creator of PGP published the full source code as a book, as these are covered under first amendment rights.
lol wtf
Encryption has played deciding roles in warfare going back to ancient times
Like, I get wanting to not give your enemies cool toys, but the way they did it here is pretty funny. Why not just… Make a new, specific classification?
Playing Devil’s Advocate - If the classification of “munitions” effectively provided all the legal protections and requirements that they wanted to apply to encryption software, it would have been a lot of wasted time and effort to create a new classification and then update all the other legal documents to include and refer to that new classification.
Like, I don’t even want to guess how many references to “munitions” exist in various laws and regulations that would have then needed to be reviewed, amended, debated in committees, and ultimately voted on.
Because pizza is a vegetable and politicians are not the most competent bunch.
How did they use encryption in ancient times?
I cannot recommend this book enough: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Code_Book and your local library should have it. It’s an entertaining read.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scytale
Damn, 7th century BC, that’s amazing.
Well the Caesar Cipher is named after you-know-who, who used it. And the subsequent Vigènere Cipher has been in use since medieval times.
I wonder how it worked for them given how simple this cipher is and that messages could take months to deliver.
Probably well enough, your basic footsoldier may not have been literate, and few were probably familiar enough with ciphers in general to know or be able to recognize the technique used.
I mean soldiers were not the ones who read messages from the generals encrypted or not, they just delivered them. The messages were also sealed so if the soldiers decided to break the seal they would probably deliver it to someone literate. So I wonder if there was an instance where Caesar or Augustus messages were intercepted, and how it turned out.
How does Voldemort play into this? Which of the Harry Potter books included Caesar?
Restricting import and export of “military-grade” encryption hardware is still a thing in some countries. And this reaction from boomer politicians is not too surprising if that’s how it is advertised, rather than “encryption implemented by every cheap-ass smart appliance out there”. Which is what RSA and ECDSA are.