Jeg sitter å leser Internet Report fra Reporters Without Borders og her står det litt om USAs forhold til bruken av kryptering.
Encryption in the dock
Many US officials have also criticised encryption, which allows Internet users to keep their messages and activity confidential by encoding it with software. Encryption, mainly used by companies to exchange sensitive economic data, has never been banned in the United States. But its export is restricted under the assenaar
Arrangement, which required inspection of material that could be used for both civil and military purposes. The 11 September attacks have revived the debate between supporters and opponents of encryption.
The director of the FBI said in March 2001 that terrorists were using encryption. On 13 September that year, Republican Sen. Judd Gregg proposed a blanket ban on encryption software whose makers had not handed over the decoding key to the
government.
The authorities noted that plans to hijack 11 US airliners had been found on the laptop computer of the man behind the first attack on the World Trade Center in 1993 and that the FBI had needed 10 months to decode the files, most of which were
encrypted with the Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) software. PGP’s inventor, David Zimmerman, who nearly went to jail in the 1980s for widely distributing his programme, recently defended it in an interview in Futur(e)s magazine. He said the US Congress, courts and media had discussed the issue for the past decade and concluded society had more to gain than lose from powerful encryption. PGP was saving lives all over the world, he said, and was used by human rights organisations everywhere,
especially in countries ruled by dictatorships.
Encryption software has under attack from the FBI’s Magic Lantern programme, an e-mail that can secretly record the keystrokes of an Internet user, so the FBI can see
the passwords and codes employed by encryption users. After press reports about it, the FBI denied having such a programme but admitted it was working on one.
Når det gjelder selve programvaren er
denne siden et utgangspunkt. Ser ikke ut til å ha vært oppdatert siden 2002, men det er mulig å laste ned PGP 6.5.8
Edit: Ok, skal refreshe tråden før jeg skriver noe neste gang
Edit2: Anbefaler den overfornevnte rapporten. Står en del interessant om sensur av informasjon på internett fra myndighetenes side.