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In the past year, a conflict has erupted between technology companies, privacy advocates, and members of the U.S. law enforcement and intelligence communities over the right to use and distribute products that contain strong encryption technology.
This debate between government actors seeking ways to preserve access to encrypted communications and a coalition of pro-encryption groups is reminiscent of an old battle that played out in the 1990s: a period that has come to be known as the "Crypto Wars."
This paper tells the story of that debate and the lessons that are relevant to today. It is a story not only about policy responses to new technology, but also a sustained, coordinated effort among industry groups, privacy advocates, and technology experts from across the political spectrum to push back against government policies that threatened online innovation and fundamental human rights.
http://www.newamerica.org/oti/doomed-to-repeat-history-lessons-from-the-crypto-wars-of-the-1990s/
[Also Covered By]: https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2015/06/history_of_the_.html
Original Submission
(Score: 3, Interesting) by aristarchus on Wednesday June 24 2015, @04:52AM
Why would anyone send a meaningless sequence of 0's and 1's over the Interwebs? Now this is the real problem, distinguishing gibberish from malice. Before this, Hanlon's razor said we should never attribute to malice that which could be explained by incompetence. And well before that we have the Razor of William of Ockham, who posited that the simpler explanation is more likely the correct one. So, the crypto wars suffer from the same damning hubris of the war criminals of the war on terra! We know that they know something, but we just don't know what it is. so any means are justified in order to prove our infantile presumptions. Oh, Momma! Well, so much for the NSA, and the even less breast-feed dezians of the Central (lack of)Intelligence Agency, and this poor guy Hayden. We think we know what we think we know, so if we cannot crack it, it must be even better encryption than we expected. Or, it is gibberish. You know, this is the thing about paranoia, when you are crazy, you are always the last one to recognize it.