Re: [ga] Re: We must move the DNSO server out of France.(was: Proof of Identification)

["Mark C. Langston" <skritch@home.com>]

On 7 December 1999, "Mark C. Langston" <skritch@home.com> wrote:
>
>I believe the British parliament either has passed, or is about to
>pass, a law or laws that would make the use of strong encryption
>illegal, such that even the posession of encrypted documents, without
>the means of decrypting them, would be illegal.
>
>I'd have to check to verify that, however.  As it stands right now,
>that's just scuttlebutt.


Hm.  Sorry.  The bill to which I referred, a bit of the draft
Electronic Communications bill, has been withdrawn.  But it may 
rear its head again in the Regulation of Investigatory Powers bill.

(The bill's at http://www.fipr.org/polarch/draftbill99/index.html)

RMS did a story on it:

http://linuxtoday.com/stories/12846.html

And from what I can tell, the bill would have made it illegal to
be in posession of anything in encrypted form, because failure to
comply with a demand for decryption would result in prison.
So, if you had an encrypted file, or even a file suspected of 
being encrypted, and for whatever reason cannot comply with the
demand to decrypt (such as, no posession of the keys), you go to
jail.

In essense, it outlaws strong encryption.

-- 
Mark C. Langston
mark@bitshift.org
Systems Admin
San Jose, CA