
How Justice Scalia defended digital privacy and also held it back - pastalex
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/justice-scalia-digital-privacy-and-the-third-party-doctrine
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andrewjl
I'll admit that this is a somewhat strange viewpoint, but I hope that one day
the Supreme Court declares cryptographic libraries equivalent to a munition
(as it is classified by the Department of State for export control purposes)
and thus subject to 2nd amendment freedoms.

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mindslight
Second amendment "freedoms" like background checks, prohibition of most types,
mandatory licensing, legibility to private regulation, and a minefield of
draconian legal gotchas?

No thanks. We'll make our own freedom.

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andrewjl
It's likely that the NSA has developed far more advanced cryptographic methods
that they use internally. If so, then most types of 'strong' crypto are
prohibited by virtue of being classified, analogous to the situation with
firearms.

Currently cryptography (at least in the United States) is subject to a myriad
of legal gotchas, starting with export controls.

The only thing preventing an outright ban given the impetus toward government
assured national security is strong lobbying by tech companies and Congress
men and women that represent their districts. Codifying that right into
precedent will make things like a special 'backdoor' harder to ram through
Congress.

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mindslight
Your first part doesn't really follow, in that if those methods were
independently discovered or otherwise leaked, they wouldn't be illegal.
Individuals don't have nuclear weapons due to more than not knowing how to
build them.

I'm not _opposed_ to your idea. I just don't see it having long-lasting
effects given how laws get perverted. Rather than things being simply not
illegal, draconian regulatory regimes are created around them - eg Colorado's
recent pot "incorporation".

A "rammed" backdoor seems unlikely to me, if only because it would be an
immediate rallying point for the entire tech community, businesses included. A
creeping regulatory regime that _slowly_ boils the frog is more worrisome.

