[txcwpalpha]

>are we, in effect, suggesting that certain math be made illegal? If that's really what's being proposed, I'd urge people to consider "Illegal Numbers" and how effective that's been.

I keep seeing this "implausibility" of enforcing illegal encryption brought up, and I really think it's wishful thinking. If such encryption algorithms ever are made illegal in some manner, it will be trivial for the government to get the result they want.

It won't be about completely stopping people from using AES, nor will it be about imprisoning every person who continues to use it. What it will be about is turning "this target of our investigation is using illegal encryption" into an immediate cause for search/arrest warrant. And that will be more than enough for 95%+ of the purposes they're looking for.

[wurst_case]

True, and this should frighten everyone. You'd be a suspected terrorist or criminal for using a VPN or tor or any foreign service that doesnt use the gov approved crypt. As long as you stayed out of the limelight and kept your head down you'd be fine. But if anyone looked into your activity, it would be easy to determine that you weren't using gov-crypt. This is inheritely authoritarian.

[asshat1]

I can think of a few ways to make this a real pain for law enforcement. Sure I use my crypto to encrypt a tunnel then you use yours to encrypt a tunnel etc.... Make an onion out of the cryptosystem and law enforcement has got to get piles of warrants to cut through the various layers.

It's stupid, sort of like a fourth ammensment onion router