The software was classed as munitions and one needed an arms dealer’s license to publish it, including online. The creator of PGP published the full source code as a book, as these are covered under first amendment rights.
Fun fact: They made encryption on Ham/GMRS radios illegal because they didn’t want the average citizenry to have access to secure off-grid comms without government spyware on networks that they control.
Reject Smarphones, Return to Amateur Radios. Just modify some radios, add a raspberry pi to do enccyption on the voice before it gets transmitted.
THEY CANT ARREST US ALL! (seriously tho, I haven’t heard of the FCC actually doing anything, unless you were jamming the airport radios or something crazy)
the software was clsssified as munitions
lol wtf
Encryption has played deciding roles in warfare going back to ancient times
Like, I get wanting to not give your enemies cool toys, but the way they did it here is pretty funny. Why not just… Make a new, specific classification?
Because pizza is a vegetable and politicians are not the most competent bunch.
Playing Devil’s Advocate - If the classification of “munitions” effectively provided all the legal protections and requirements that they wanted to apply to encryption software, it would have been a lot of wasted time and effort to create a new classification and then update all the other legal documents to include and refer to that new classification.
Like, I don’t even want to guess how many references to “munitions” exist in various laws and regulations that would have then needed to be reviewed, amended, debated in committees, and ultimately voted on.
How did they use encryption in ancient times?
Damn, 7th century BC, that’s amazing.
