Editing 504: Legal Hacks
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Encryption, the study and use of which is known as "cryptography," or "crypto" for short ("crypto" in more recent years has tended to be short for "cryptocurrency", but not in this case), is the art of transmitting messages that can only be read by the intended receiver(s) by using mathematical techniques to conceal ("encrypt") the data in the message. One common and effective way to encrypt messages is the {{w|RSA_(algorithm)|RSA algorithm}}, which is based on the difficulty of {{w|integer factorization}} for products of two prime numbers. | Encryption, the study and use of which is known as "cryptography," or "crypto" for short ("crypto" in more recent years has tended to be short for "cryptocurrency", but not in this case), is the art of transmitting messages that can only be read by the intended receiver(s) by using mathematical techniques to conceal ("encrypt") the data in the message. One common and effective way to encrypt messages is the {{w|RSA_(algorithm)|RSA algorithm}}, which is based on the difficulty of {{w|integer factorization}} for products of two prime numbers. | ||
| β | Being able to share unbreakable codes and decrypt other people's codes gives countries a military advantage - for example, in World War II, the Americans and British were often able to figure out where a German attack would be coming and send reinforcements there, because they had cracked the | + | Being able to share unbreakable codes and decrypt other people's codes gives countries a military advantage - for example, in World War II, the Americans and British were often able to figure out where a German attack would be coming and send reinforcements there, because they had cracked the German codes. Because of this, the {{w|Export_of_cryptography_from_the_United_States|United States government initially tried to keep}} the mathematical details of strong encryption algorithms (including RSA) inside the country by classifying the algorithms as a weapon. It is a crime to share certain kinds of weapons technology with other countries without permission. Amateur and professional cryptographers, angry about the attempt to restrict their work, lobbied the government to change the rule and stop treating cryptography as a weapon, in part so that they could continue to collaborate with colleagues overseas, and in part because they wanted the ability to pass secret messages that the government could not easily decrypt. The export restrictions were gradually loosened and would have mostly been lifted by the year 2000. |
In the comic, [[Megan]] makes the provocative and counter-intuitive point that perhaps the cryptographic community could have best ensured easy access to the RSA technique by *allowing* the government to treat RSA as a weapon, and then, once everyone is certain that RSA is a weapon, invoking the {{w|Second Amendment to the United States Constitution}}, commonly known as the "{{w|Right to keep and bear arms in the United States|right to bear arms}}" amendment (that is, the right to own and use weapons). In other words, if RSA were a weapon, it would be granted constitutional protections. | In the comic, [[Megan]] makes the provocative and counter-intuitive point that perhaps the cryptographic community could have best ensured easy access to the RSA technique by *allowing* the government to treat RSA as a weapon, and then, once everyone is certain that RSA is a weapon, invoking the {{w|Second Amendment to the United States Constitution}}, commonly known as the "{{w|Right to keep and bear arms in the United States|right to bear arms}}" amendment (that is, the right to own and use weapons). In other words, if RSA were a weapon, it would be granted constitutional protections. | ||
