DOJ: Strong encryption that we don’t have access to is “unreasonable”
This subject always reminds me of a talk I heard Eben Moglen give, where he said:<p>&quot;In 1995, there was a debate at Harvard Law School – four of us discussing the future of public key encryption and its control. I was on the side, I suppose, of freedom. It’s where I try to be. With me at that debate was a man called Daniel Weitzner who now works in the White House making Internet policy for the Obama administration.<p>On the other side was the then Deputy Attorney General of the United States and a lawyer in private practice named Stewart Baker who had been chief council to the National Security Agency, our listeners, and who was then in private life helping businesses to deal with the listeners. He then became, later on, the deputy for policy planning in the Department of Homeland Security in the United States and has much to do with what happened in our network after 2001.<p>At any rate, the four of us spent two pleasant hours debating the right to encrypt and at the end there was a little dinner party at the Harvard faculty club, and at the end, after all the food had been taken away and just the port and the walnuts were left on the table, Stuart said, “All right, among us now that we are all in private, just us girls, I’ll let our hair down.”<p>He didn’t have much hair even then, but he let it down.<p>“We are not going to prosecute your client, Mr. Zimmermann,&quot; he said. “Public key encryption will become available. We fought a long, losing 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?&quot;<p>And a cold chill went up my spine and I thought, all right, Stuart, and now I know you’re going to spend the next twenty years trying to eliminate anonymity in human society and I am going to try to stop you and we’ll see how it goes.<p>And it’s going badly.&quot;<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.softwarefreedom.org&#x2F;events&#x2F;2012&#x2F;Moglen-rePublica-Berlin&#x2F;transcript.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.softwarefreedom.org&#x2F;events&#x2F;2012&#x2F;Moglen-rePublica...</a>