[ale] Better do my talk before it is illegal

[Michael H. Warfield]

On Sun, 2012-01-29 at 17:36 -0500, Charles Shapiro wrote:
> Dang, I missed that fight.  I still have my computer case autographed
> by Phil Zimmermann though.  A friend of mine actually had the "This is
> a Munition", but wouldn't part with it for love nor money.

Seriously...  Both of my sons and I have the "RSA munitions tee shirt",
a black tee shirt with the RSA algorithm printed on it (amusingly
printed in Great Briton and IMPORTED).  I'll bring mine next month.  One
time, I asked a school councilor at their high school if they could wear
it, because of the "zero tolerance" weapons policy there, and the person
mentally locked up and could NOT get their head around the very concept
and ended up (after several sputtering staggering moments of confusion)
saying "I have no idea".  Schools and school personnel have no sense of
humor or irony and do not like their policies being made the horses' ass
of jokes.

I've met Phil several times in the past.  He visited ISS several times
as well as a Networld Interop conference or two.  We chat when we have a
chance though it's been several years at this point.

Regards,
Mike

> -- CHS
> 
> On Sun, Jan 29, 2012 at 5:27 PM, Michael H. Warfield <mhw at wittsend.com> wrote:
> > On Fri, 2012-01-27 at 12:13 -0500, Charles Shapiro wrote:
> >> Next month's ALE talk is on jailbreaking  your Gphone and installing
> >> CyanogenMod on it ( by yours truly).  Better hurry.
> >> That's about to become illegal (again)
> >
> >> https://www.eff.org/pages/jailbreaking-not-crime-tell-copyright-office-free-your-devices
> >
> > This brings back such memories, like an overwhelming feeling of deja
> > vu...
> >
> > There was a time, when they told us we could not "export" cryptography,
> > because it was a munition, a weapon of war.  Technically, we could not
> > even assist a foreign national with such matters.  I could not even
> > contribute to the Canadian "Free/SWAN" project out of their fear of
> > "contaminating" their source with US regulations.  Even so, under the
> > regime of ITAR (International Traffic in Arms Regulations), I
> > contributed to Tatu's SSH (the pre-OpenSSH SSH) which he acknowledged in
> > his README file (Ok - I got the bloody thing working under SCO ODT, so
> > sue me.  It was before that whole bullshit mess hit the fan with
> > Caldera, it was that long ago.)
> >
> > After ITAR, there came EAR under a different department, which was
> > merely the government's last ditch effort to avoid loosing ALL their
> > crypt export regulations in court (one of the things Dan Berstein did
> > right).  And in that time, I wrote the SSL patches to fetchmail and Eric
> > Raymond and I decided to proactively post my patches and the patched
> > sources to his site and to flip the powers that be the bird.  That was
> > less than two months before they threw in the towel and declared
> > OpenSource software to be free from such ridiculous regulations and
> > another year before they decided, "oh, yeah, that's both source and
> > binaries from the source."
> >
> > I remember walking into an AUUG meeting one evening with Luke Leighton
> > (then fellow Samba team member, fellow co-worker, and British citizen)
> > and the talk was being given by a couple of FBI reps.  Brent was running
> > the "guru session" and saw us coming in.  He remarked "and here is our
> > prerequisite cryptographer.  I immediately replied "Yes!  And I have
> > with me my prerequisite foreign nation whom I'm not allowed to speak
> > with about cryptography!".  Their reaction was to turn red and remark
> > "that's not our department".  Next day, at the office, I heard ISS got a
> > call from the FBI that is summed up thusly:  "DO YOU KNOW THIS
> > ASSHOLE?!?!  Sigh...  Yeah, he's one of our founders.  We know him.
> > Sigh..."  The two FBI dudes are still friends to this day and I attended
> > one of their retirement parties.
> >
> > People...  The more things change the more they stay the same.  Have the
> > balls to stand up for your rights when you know you're right.
> >
> >> -- CHS
> >
> > Regards,
> > Mike
> > --
> > Michael H. Warfield (AI4NB) | (770) 985-6132 |  mhw at WittsEnd.com
> >   /\/\|=mhw=|\/\/          | (678) 463-0932 |  http://www.wittsend.com/mhw/
> >   NIC whois: MHW9          | An optimist believes we live in the best of all
> >  PGP Key: 0x674627FF        | possible worlds.  A pessimist is sure of it!
> >
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> 

-- 
Michael H. Warfield (AI4NB) | (770) 985-6132 |  mhw at WittsEnd.com
   /\/\|=mhw=|\/\/          | (678) 463-0932 |  http://www.wittsend.com/mhw/
   NIC whois: MHW9          | An optimist believes we live in the best of all
 PGP Key: 0x674627FF        | possible worlds.  A pessimist is sure of it!
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