[107107] in Cypherpunks
New York Times Internet Predictions
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Martin Minow)
Fri Jan 1 15:18:23 1999
In-Reply-To: <36D72A9C.EEB79E9A@qmail.pjwstk.waw.pl>
Date: Fri, 1 Jan 1999 12:05:04 -0800
To: cypherpunks@cyberpass.net
From: Martin Minow <minow@pobox.com>
Reply-To: Martin Minow <minow@pobox.com>
Here are some predictions on Internet law that might be of particular
interest to the Cypherpunks community. From
<<http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/99/01/cyber/cyberlaw/01law.html>
Eben Moglen, professor, Columbia Law School
2. Encryption regulation implodes: Next year people will become
generally
aware that every multimedia notebook on the planet can be turned into
a
strong-encryption secure telephone at no cost, using freely available
software. The recognition that traditional encryption regulation is
entirely obsolete will spur further development around the world in
both
authoritarian and libertarian directions, depending on local
government
conditions.
3. Personal information privacy: As the European Union and the United
States try to find a modus vivendi for the continued exchange of
commercial
data, U.S. insistence on free-market, minimum-regulation approaches to
information privacy will come under intense pressure, as a new
consumer
movement tries to use international privacy law to rein in the behavior
of
large corporations in the U.S. economy. This story will come to no
resolution in 1999, but it will rise to a prominence it never had
before.
...
Michael Froomkin, professor, University of Miami School of Law
1. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit will decide the
Bernstein case. Originally taken up on an "expedited" basis almost a
year
ago and inexplicably delayed since, the court is being asked to rule
that
Daniel Bernstein's cryptographic source code is First Amendment speech,
and
hence exportable, or that no program is covered by the First Amendment.
A
win for Bernstein means the case will go to the Supreme Court; a loss
will
invite the government to re-write the export control rules to include,
for
the first time in our history, a ban on the export of some books
[because
the books reprint certain encryption source codes that, by law, cannot
be
exported].
2. Law enforcement officers will spend increasing hours online posing
as
child pornographers and young girls. As a result there will be more
media-friendly arrests of Internet users for obscenity-related
offenses. As
a political result, if logical non sequitur, the FBI will renew its
calls
for domestic controls of cryptography.
