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

["Roeland M.J. Meyer" <rmeyer@mhsc.com>]

This is new and interesting to me, I wonder how Adam and Ben Laurie are
going to handle it? For those who don't know, they are the chief proponents
of OpenSSL and Apache-SSL and they both live in London, at the firm of A.L.
Digital.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-ga@dnso.org [mailto:owner-ga@dnso.org]On Behalf Of Mark C.
> Langston
> Sent: Tuesday, December 07, 1999 10:22 AM
> To: ga@dnso.org
> Subject: Re: [ga] Re: We must move the DNSO server out of France.(was:
> Proof of Identification)
>
>
>
> 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 Electronic Communications bill, has been withdrawn.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
>