The new U.S. regulations are based on the Wassenaar Arrangement Revision of 1998, where exports without license of 56 bit
For more information see:
Seven states stay excluded from the new freedom. These are states like Libya, Iraq, Iran, North Korea and Cuba, altogether states seen as terrorist supporting. No encryption tools may be exported into those countries.
This is, what happened in the USA, whereas in Germany the issue of a cryptography-law is still on the agenda. Until now, in Germany, everyone can decide by her-/himself, whether she/he wants to encrypt electronic messages or not. Some organizations fear that this could get changed soon. Therefore an urgent action was organized in February 2000 to demonstrate the government that people want the freedom to decide on their own. One governmental argument is that only very few people actually use cryptography. Therefore the urgent action is organized as a campaign for using it more frequently.
For more information on this see:
Other European countries have more liberate laws on cryptography, like France. Austria doesn't have any restrictions at all, probably because of a governmental lack of interest more than accepting freedom.
The (former) restrictions in the bigger countries influenced and hindered developments for safer key-systems, e.g. the key-length was held down extraordinarily.
"Due to the suspicious nature of crypto users I have a feeling DES will be with us forever, we will just keep adding keys and cycles (...). There is a parallel between designing electronic commerce infrastructure today that uses weak cryptography (i.e. 40 or 56 bit keys) and, say, designing air traffic control systems in the '60s using two digit year fields. (...) Just because you can retire before it all blows up doesn't make it any less irresponsible."
(Arnold G. Reinhold)
The Chinese State Encryption Management Commission (SEMC) announced in March 2000 that only strong encryption tools will have to be registered in the future. Which sounds so nice on first sight, does not mean a lot in reality: any kind of useful encryption technique, like the
The restrictions and prohibitions for cryptography are part of the states' wish to acquire more control - in the name of the battle against criminality, probably?
Due to the emerging organized criminality the governments want to obtain more freedom of control over citizens. Organizations like the NSA appear as the leaders of such demands.
What about civil rights or Human Rights?
TEXTBLOCK 1/2 // URL: http://world-information.org/wio/infostructure/100437611776/100438659135
Copyright protection generally means that certain uses of a work are lawful only if they are done with the authorization of the owner of the copyright. The most typical are the following:
- copying or reproducing a work
- performing a work in public
- making a sound recording of a work
- making a motion picture of a work
- broadcasting a work
- translating a work
- adapting a work
Under certain national laws, some of these rights, which are referred to, as "economic rights'" are not exclusive rights of authorization but in specific cases, merely rights to remuneration. Some strictly determined uses (for example quotations or the use of works by way of illustration for teaching) are completely free, that is, they require neither authorization of, nor remuneration for, the owner of the copyright. This practice is described as
In addition to economic rights, authors enjoy "moral rights" on the basis of which they have the right to claim their authorship and require that their names be indicated on the copies of the work and in connection with other uses thereof. They also have the right to oppose the mutilation or deformation of their creations.
The owner of a copyright may usually transfer his right or may license certain uses of his work. Moral rights are generally inalienable and remain with the creator even after he has transferred his economic rights, although the author may waive their exercise.
Furthermore there exist rights related to copyright that are referred to as "neighboring rights". In general there are three kinds of neighboring rights: 1) the rights of performing artists in their performances, 2) the rights of producers of phonograms in their phonograms, and 3) the rights of broadcasting organizations in their radio and television programs. Neighboring rights attempt to protect those who assist intellectual creators to communicate their message and to disseminate their works to the public at large.
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Analysts at the Government Communications Headquarters in Cheltenham process the mass of intercepted satellite communications produced by their sophisticated interception system, especially from Morwenstow and Menwith Hill. At the headquarters personel use advanced computer hardware and the Dictionary system.
YAKIMA, USA
Latitude: 46.592633, Longitude: -120.528908
The Yakima Research Station was established in the early 1970s inside the 100,000-hectare United States Army Yakima Firing Center, 200 kilometers south-east
of Seattle. The facility, located between the Saddle Mountains and Rattlesnake Hills, initially consisted of a long operations building and a single large dish pointing
west to enable collection against the Pacific Intelsat satellite. By 1995 the Yakima station had expanded to five dish antennae, three facing west to the Pacific and two, including the original large 1970s dish, facing east. In addition to the original operations building several newer buildings had been added, the largest a two-story windowless concrete structure. The Yakima station has been monitoring Pacific Intelsat communications since it opened, and also monitors the Pacific Ocean area Inmarsat-2 satellite.
Source:
GCHQ is the British Government Communication Headquarters, which is in fact an electronic monitoring centre which intercepts communications using spy satellites, listening devices and code-cracking equipment. The 1994 Intelligence Services Act defines GCHQ's role in the post Cold War world. National security, economic well-being and the prevention and detection of serious crime are its headline interests. It routinely gathers information on drug-dealing, terrorism, and the movement of arms and key resources such as oil, but is also said to be heavily involved in ECHELON. GCHG praises itself to use and design high end technology such as Cray systems, Tandem based storage and high-end workstations, as well as software for Signals Analysis, Complex Data Manipulation, Translation and Transcription.
Latitude: 45.33, Longitude: -75.6
At Canadian Forces Station Leitrim collection of foreign signals intelligence is collected. Foreign radio, radar and other electronic emissions are intercepted and analyzed to provide foreign intelligence to the Canadian government. Leitrim contains a wide variety of antennae, including a Pusher HF-DF circularly-disposed antenna array (CDAA), three other large circular arrays, four satellite dishes, and a number of other, small antennae. The targets of Leitrim's dishes are probably Mexican and/or Brazilian communications satellites. Both countries' satellite constellations were established in 1985, at about the same time as Leitrim's new dishes started to be installed. A focus on these satellites would also explain CSE's rumoured increase in Spanish language activities.
Source:
American corporation that was the world's largest automotive manufacturer and perhaps the largest industrial corporation throughout most of the 20th century. It was founded in 1908 to consolidate several motorcar companies and today operates manufacturing and assembly plants and distribution centers throughout the United States and Canada and many other countries. Its major products include automobiles and trucks, a wide range of automotive components, engines, and defense and aerospace material. In 1996 it sold Electronic Data Systems, and in 1997 it sold the defense units of its Hughes Electronics subsidiary to the Raytheon Company, thus leaving the computer-services and defense-aerospace fields in order to concentrate on its automotive businesses. The company's headquarters are in Detroit, Michigan.
A transistor is a solid-state device for amplifying, controlling, and generating electrical signals. Transistors are used in a wide array of electronic equipment, ranging from pocket