[4609] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Re: Bernstein Opinion Up
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Phil Karn)
Thu May 6 18:19:04 1999
Date: Thu, 6 May 1999 14:43:09 -0700 (PDT)
From: Phil Karn <karn@qualcomm.com>
To: jya@pipeline.com
Cc: cryptography@c2.net, karn@qualcomm.com
In-reply-to: <199905062033.QAA32762@smtp0.mindspring.com> (message from John
Young on Thu, 06 May 1999 16:29:10 -0400)
I just read the opinion. These judges actually *got* it! Or at least
two of them did, judges Bright and Fletcher. There's some marvelous
stuff in their opinion, such as the observation that Bernstein's code
had more than a little political expression to it since by showing how
to turn a hash function (which isn't regulated) into a cipher (which
is) he meant to demonstrate the arbitrary and silly nature of the
regulations.
Judge Nelson unfortunately bought the government's bogus claim that
crypto source code was more like a machine than speech, claiming that
"Only a few people can actually understand what a line of source code
would direct a computer to do." But even Nelson did not say he'd
definitely uphold the regulations as constitutional; he just thought
Bernstein should have used a different legal theory to argue his case.
Phil
