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According to Daniel Mathews a lecturer in mathematics and founding member of Wikileaks, new laws passed in Australia (but not yet in effect) could criminalize the teaching of encryption. He explains how a ridiculously broad law could effectively make any encryption stronger than 512 bits criminal if your client is not Australian.
From the article:
The story begins with the Australian government's Defence and Strategic Goods List (DSGL). This list specifies goods considered important to national defence and security, and which are therefore tightly controlled.
Regulation of military weapons is not a particularly controversial idea. But the DSGL covers much more than munitions. It also includes many "dual-use" goods, which are goods with both military and civilian uses. This includes substantial sections on chemicals, electronics and telecommunications, among other things.
Disturbingly, the DSGL risks veering wildly in the direction of over-classification, covering activities that are completely unrelated to military or intelligence applications.
He says, "In short, the DSGL casts an extremely wide net, potentially catching open source privacy software, information security research and education, and the entire computer security industry in its snare. Most ridiculous, though, are some badly flawed technicalities. As I have argued before, the specifications are so imprecise that they potentially include a little algorithm you learned at primary school called division. If so, then division has become a potential weapon, and your calculator (or smartphone, computer, or any electronic device) is a potential delivery system for it."
(Score: 5, Insightful) by BsAtHome on Friday May 22 2015, @10:27PM
The whole discussion is actually about something else. It does not handle in its core about mathematics or any dual-use or whatever. It is all about controlling knowledge. The person with knowledge which another person does not have is how to control a society divided into classes. Prevent the knowledge from being shared and the knowledgeable are either under (forced) control of the rulers or dissidents.
The game is nothing new, f.ex. remember the secret of porcelain? The internet has made knowledge into a commodity and that is a problem when you want to control that flow. We've seen a push-back from the "rulers" to put the genie back in the bottle. That, of course, does not work, so they resort to the only other option: make sharing knowledge illegal.
At some point, we, as a society, should have gathered enough knowledge to be able to see through this web of smoke and mirrors blaming something on somebody or some group. It is rhetoric and it does not change the fact that we have had a rather stable period /because/ we have been able to share much of our knowledge. A dangerous thing, an egalitarian system, because it deprives the rulers from power.
Just say no and resist.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 23 2015, @07:12AM
this sort of thing is not new
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Traffic_in_Arms_Regulations [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 23 2015, @04:30PM
It's not new, but it's as much of a violation of freedom of speech as ever. Completely unacceptable.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 24 2015, @05:56PM
"Knowledge is power, guard it well." -- Librarian Isador Akios