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We should remember that DJB was a key person in making cryptography fully legal in the US.

«The State Department was unsympathetic to Bernstein's situation and told Bernstein he would need a license to be an arms dealer before he could simply post the text of his encryption program on the Internet. They also told him that they would deny him an export license if he actually applied for one, because his technology was too secure.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation pulled together a top-notch legal team and sued the United States government on behalf of Dan Bernstein. The court ruled, for the first time ever, that written software code is speech protected by the First Amendment. The court further ruled that the export control laws on encryption violated Bernstein's First Amendment rights by prohibiting his constitutionally protected speech. As a result, the government changed its export regulations.» From https://www.eff.org/about/history

http://cr.yp.to/export/status.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernstein_v._United_States




So who should we entrust with protecting our communications over the open Internet?

The US defense contractor and the reclusive gentleman in the UK whose code (for whatever reasons) has a rather poor security record,

or

the math professor whose code (qmail, daemontools, djbdns, etc.) generally has an excellent security record?

Who enforces better quality control?

Does that matter?

Or maybe we should be asking how much these men are paid? (As are the journalists and their readers.)

We know from the statements of the US Steve that the UK Steve does not get paid much for his work.

Maybe it's really not about the money?

Nevermind. I'm sure the journalists have it right.


Decided: December 9, 1996


Berenstain Bear




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