[FYI] IT security to become 'political battleground'

["Axel H Horns" <axel.h.horns@gmx.net>]

<http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/55/35805.html>

IT security to become 'political battleground'

By John Leyden

Posted: 25/02/2004 at 02:47 GMT

Security will re-emerge as a major arena for political debate over 
the next year, cryptography legend Whitfield Diffie predicted today.

The cryptographic community fought a long and ultimately successful 
battle to lift US export restrictions on encryption technology. The 
climax was a Clinton administration decision more than four years ago 
to relax controls.

Since then - aside from the ever-present debate about handing over 
cryptographic keys to law enforcement authorities - things have been 
a good deal quieter, at least intellectually.

Diffie, chief security officer at Sun Microsystems, forecasts that 
this will change in coming months. The political battle will spill 
over into two distinct technology fields.

Conflicting views about law enforcement requests to monitor voice 
over IP networks and over digital rights management (DRM) technology 
will re-energise IT politics, he said.

Extending wiretapping to VoIP is controversial because it "affects 
the architecture of networks of all kinds," according to Diffie.

And DRM is contentious because it extends to copyright holders 
control over end-user systems.

[...]

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