Joe Biden tried to ban email encryption back in 1991 • Hacker News Board

Re: Joe Biden tried to ban email encryption back in 1991

#51

Post by derleth » Sun, Dec 30, 2012, 8:57 PM UTC

1337biz wrote: post #18

Zoophy wrote: post #5

I wish he had succeed. Digital, not just email, encryption is a threat to national security.

When I read these kind of comments, I am not sure if these commentators are compensated better than China's 50 cent party. Some mturk generated comments would probably provide more qualitative contributions than something like this.

> When I read these kind of comments, I am not sure if these commentators are compensated better than China's 50 cent party. Some mturk generated comments would probably provide more qualitative contributions than something like this.

I doubt anyone bothers to pay people to post this stuff to Hacker News. The battle over crypto is essentially over at this point.

As an aside, 'qualitative' is not a synonym for 'quality'; it means 'involving distinctions based on qualities' and contrasts with 'quantitative', which refers to distinctions based on numerical measurements.

Re: Joe Biden tried to ban email encryption back in 1991

#52

Post by canttestthis » Sun, Dec 30, 2012, 9:04 PM UTC

Kynlyn wrote: post #36

tptacek wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This statement would make sense if you could provide examples of (at the time) younger Senators who actively opposed crypto regulation so we could compare their track records as well.

Representative Bob Goodlatte was a proponent of relaxation of encryption controls; pushing for a law in 1999, only 6 years after assuming office. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Goodlatte Conrad Burns was a sponsor of the PROTECT Act which was an attempt to overhaul encryption regulations, including prohibiting domestic controls of encrypted software. He did this after being in office for about 8 years. http://www.t…

John Kerry was anti-export control and pro-encryption rights at that time, and he's been a senator since 1985, so I don't think this is true.

Re: Joe Biden tried to ban email encryption back in 1991

#53

Post by jacoblyles » Sun, Dec 30, 2012, 9:16 PM UTC

It's worth noting that Silicon Valley's lobbying organization is inchoate and ineffective compared to more established causes. I'd love to change this. Why can't we use our strengths in crowd-funding and crowd-activism to flex our muscle a bit in some primaries?

California isn't going to be anything but solid blue anytime soon, but we could easily primary anti-privacy Democrats and replace them with pro-privacy Democrats. This is what the Tea Party has done to get rid of fiscal moderates in the Republican House caucus. There's no need to accept whatever creeps the major parties deign to give us.

Re: Joe Biden tried to ban email encryption back in 1991

#54

Post by jacoblyles » Sun, Dec 30, 2012, 9:18 PM UTC

kabdib wrote: post #29

Feinstein supported this, too. I wrote her a letter; her response was along the lines of "I don't care, and in any event it's good for you." Haven't voted for her since. With recent events, even though I don't live in CA any more, I plan to give her opponents money, for any election she's a candidate in.

Feinstein won't lose because this is a solid Democratic state. Unless there is an organized primary campaign against her, elections are an auto-win for the Feinstein campaign.

Re: Joe Biden tried to ban email encryption back in 1991

#55

Post by anigbrowl » Sun, Dec 30, 2012, 9:32 PM UTC

mtgx wrote: post #37

Kynlyn wrote: post #6

This is the kind of thing one can expect when their leaders are so far removed from the people that they govern. Joe Biden has been in office since 1973. I'd wager that's longer than many of the HN readers have even been alive. When you have politicians who have been running around in the Washington circles that long, some really bad things will come of it. So, at the time he proposed that, he had been in Washington…

Term limits would solve most of the lobbying/bribing/corruption problem in Washington. It wouldn't fix for good, but it would make paying for passing new laws a lot more expensive for companies. Also if everyone could only run once, they'd be a lot less worried about begging for donations for the next campaign. According to Larry Lessig representatives spend up to 70% of their time trying to get donations for their n…

We have term limits in California, along with a reputation for one of the most dysfunctional state legislatures in the nation. Term limits are not the panacea people seem to think they are.

Re: Joe Biden tried to ban email encryption back in 1991

#56

Post by tptacek » Sun, Dec 30, 2012, 9:43 PM UTC

lubujackson wrote: post #50

Read Crypto by Steven Levy. An amazing account of how cryptography was finally opened up for the Internet. Because before the Net, the wording of the law was very, very restrictive in a way that made no sense with how the Internet operated. It really is eye opening to see the role the NSA played and the tactics they used to try to keep things smothered. Not very different than what is still happening right now with t…

What law are you referring to here?

Re: Joe Biden tried to ban email encryption back in 1991

#57

Post by philwelch » Sun, Dec 30, 2012, 9:57 PM UTC

jacoblyles wrote: post #54

kabdib wrote: post #29

Feinstein supported this, too. I wrote her a letter; her response was along the lines of "I don't care, and in any event it's good for you." Haven't voted for her since. With recent events, even though I don't live in CA any more, I plan to give her opponents money, for any election she's a candidate in.

Feinstein won't lose because this is a solid Democratic state. Unless there is an organized primary campaign against her, elections are an auto-win for the Feinstein campaign.

If only there was some kind of civil libertarian Democratic tea party movement.

Re: Joe Biden tried to ban email encryption back in 1991

#58

Post by sageikosa » Sun, Dec 30, 2012, 10:00 PM UTC

kabdib wrote: post #47

sageikosa wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

She doesn't need your vote.

But her oppponents do. And her opponents could use some cash, too.

Having received 7.75 million votes in 2012, she can probably afford to burn a few, rather than spend time trying to turn a single voter's opinion. She won by about 3 million votes over her opponent.

I am not stating that the fight isn't a good one, only that her haughty and dismissive attitude is calculable from her election margin of victory.

Re: Joe Biden tried to ban email encryption back in 1991

#59

Post by Create » Sun, Dec 30, 2012, 10:12 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #43

declan wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Although Biden's amendment by itself wouldn't have outlawed SSH, it was enough to make programmers see the writing on the wall. A bill with domestic restrictions on encryption was approved by a House committee in the 1990s, and Biden's bill was what prompted PRZ to release PGP, as PRZ himself said at the time. See: http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-20032910-281.html In response to lobbying from the FBI, a House commi…

(a) You appear to be referring to a bill that died in a House committee. (b) It's not in dispute that the DOJ opposed cryptography in the '90s (that's the lede of the comment you're replying to). (c) The bill you're referring to had nothing to do with Biden. (d) The one crypto-relevant bill that does bear Biden's name explicitly forbids the government from demanding that ISPs design networks so as to provide plaintex…

"All right, among us now we that we are all in private just us girls all let our hair down" he didn’t had much hair even then but he let it down "We are not going to prosecute your client Mr Zimmermann he said public key encryption will become available we fought a long loosing battle against it but it was just a delaying tactic" and then he looked around the room and he said "But nobody cares about anonymity do they?"

And a cold chilled went up my spine and I thought alright Stuart and now I know you’re going to spent the next twenty years trying to eliminate anonymity in human society and I am going to try to stop you and let’s see how it goes.

And it’s going badly.

We didn’t built the net with anonymity built in. That was a mistake now we are paying for it.

Our network assumes that you can be tracked everywhere.

And we have taken the Web, and we made facebook out of it.

http://benjamin.sonntag.fr/Moglen-at-Re-Publica-Freedom-of-t...

Re: Joe Biden tried to ban email encryption back in 1991

#60

Post by lubujackson » Sun, Dec 30, 2012, 10:12 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #56

lubujackson wrote: post #50

Read Crypto by Steven Levy. An amazing account of how cryptography was finally opened up for the Internet. Because before the Net, the wording of the law was very, very restrictive in a way that made no sense with how the Internet operated. It really is eye opening to see the role the NSA played and the tactics they used to try to keep things smothered. Not very different than what is still happening right now with t…

What law are you referring to here?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Export_of_cryptography_in_the_U...

I was thinking of when the limit of crypto for export was 40 bits SSL, which would have made all e-commerce impossible due to the uselessness of 40 bit crypto. Luckily that was changed.