Export restrictions

In this task we are required to explain and consider the effects of restrictions on exporting strong encryption systems. The US government wants to do this thing, and we're about to express our views on the subject.

In our opinion, the government is trying to control the people. This is a remnant from the Cold War era, and in the modern world this should not be accepted. In our view the main reason is that if regular people can encrypt and therefore block the access of the government to their data, the government claims that there can be people threatening the country and it's peoples security. Which in the past 50 years of US policy is not acceptable, and therefore they try to restrict the ways of average Joe hiding from their all-seeing eyes (for example the rumored Echelon system).

There has been a lawsuit against the government by a civilian, who wanted to publish his article about his encoding systems and the government tried to ban it. First case was won by the civilian, second lost on the grounds that there was no real threat from the government to the civilian. After another case in the same field, it was ruled that software source code is protected by the First Amendment of the US (freedom of speech).

As always, there are pros and cons. Privacy, other countries and businesses secrets are always compromised to a system, which is controlled by "someone". There are serious threats in this style, since there is always a human on the other side, which can "leak" and therefore ruin the whole national security issue. Ville also sees that controlling the people totally is wrong: we should be living in a free world.

On the positive side: if the encryption methods are restricted and regular people can not access them, the government can protect the nation better. This sounds like a police state diplomacy to us, but to what lengths are we prepared to go in order to protect ourselves? Or are we just plain paranoid?

Internet is all about being worldwide and open. It should not be completely controlled by nations by their own ruling (e.g. China and North Korea), because people should have the right to express themselves and access all information available, even though it would be against the country's current policies. In the western nations it is highly hypocritical to blame China for being a dictatorship and then perform these kind of restricting acts on their own people.