Comment by Roark66
15 days ago
Somehow I have the deja-vu of when Theresa May (as a Home Secretary) tried to ban personal encryption altogether. Let me remind everyone this is in a country that already has a law that says you're legally required to give your encryption key to the police and if you do not, even if there is no other crime you can get 2 years in jail...
This told me all I needed to know about her level of understanding of complex topics. It only went downhill from there.
I'm always reminded of this http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/7970731.stm
"The Home Secretary's husband has said sorry for embarrassing his wife after two adult films were viewed at their home, then claimed for on expenses."
The follow up article has some fun nuggets too http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8145935.stm
Even low-grade encryption was actually forbidden in France for a while in the mid 90s. I remember snickering about the whole thing back then, in a much smaller but also quite similar forum.
https://www.theregister.com/1999/01/15/france_to_end_severe_...
> Until 1996 anyone wishing to encrypt any document had to first receive an official sanction or risk fines from F6000 to F500,000 ($1000 to $89,300) and a 2-6 month jail term. Right now, apart from a handful of exemptions, any unauthorised use of encryption software is illegal.
These two former empires seem/seemed to have an over-inflated sense of importance and ability to control the world.
There was also in the 90s the weird period of export control of encryption software from the US, leading to the "this tshirt is a munition" shirts with the algorithm printed on them. And the (thankfully failed) "clipper chip" mandate.
Those controls all still exist. You just get a pass if you’re using “standard crypto”. Or if your implementation is open source.
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I wonder if the primary purpose of the law was to have a catch-all charge to file against people who stole military equipment? Of course there are charges like espionage and theft, but it seems like it could be a tactic to be able to levy "exporting an encryption device" charges in addition to everything else.
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Apple made an advertisement about the PowerMac G4 as a "supercomputer" because of onerous export controls related to encryption way back. It's more cheeky, I think, than serious. But then again, I haven't looked into it beyond just remembering that it happened.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OoxvLq0dFvw
When you go back a few decades, "supercomputer" level performance doesn't seem all that impressive now.
A Raspberry Pi outperforms a Cray-1 supercomputer, for instance.
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The French encryption ban was a moronic aberration that just lasted a few years. Hopefully just like this UK regulation.
It wasn’t relevant to any Apple ads.
From Minitel to the telecomms irrelevance against the US and UK. I'd guess the French investors's would love to kick the nuts of the whole parliament members signing that crap.
Why do you think it's an issue or understanding or intelligence? It's a matter of power and control. Protesting the intelligence of these leaders won't result in any structural change.
If anything, greater intelligence would only accelerate the damage and persuasiveness behind its public consent.