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The Politics of Encryption
Most of the governments of the world are very
interested in encryption.The problem for governments is that strong
(ie, unbreakable) encryption can be used by criminals (or political
enemies?) to communicate securely, so there is a an obvious vested
interest in restricting it. On the other hand, strong encryption is
absolutely necessary to enable Internet-based commerce (we see some
applications later), so a government which restricts its use is
limiting its people from participating in the world of
Internet-based business.
Over the past 20 years, the USA government has proposed and/or
mandated a variety of encryption laws to either restrict the use of
strong encryption, or to force developers to provide a
"back door" to their systems, which would allow
officials to read encrypted data. In addition, for many years they
have classified all forms of strong encryption as
munitions, and restricted export of encryption
products.
Within Australia, the position is not so
clear. Apparently, export of cryptographic
software is still restricted, but private use is
unrestricted. Correct, up-to-date, information is hard to find!
Other governments (eg France, Malaysia, China, etc) have, at
various times, simply banned the private use of strong encryption.
In most cases, these policies have subsequently been reversed.
The tutorial for this lecture is Tutorial
#20.
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Copyright © 2001 by
Philip Scott, La Trobe
University.
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