Encryption Export Case Tossed, Government Says To Trust Them To Ignore Law

from the hmmm... dept

For years, one of the big "geek" issues concerned the "export" of encryption. The US government deemed encryption software to be a weapon, and exporting that was illegal. One of the more well known cases concerned professor Daniel Bernstein, who wanted to distribute a simple encryption program he had written. The government's latest response in the case is to say that, while the law still stands, they won't enforce it - and on that basis, the judge has thrown out the case. Of course, it makes you wonder why, if they're not planning on enforcing the law, they don't work to overturn the law completely. As it stands, with the law still in place, it lets them do selective enforcement, and wait for a case where they can't pin anything else on someone, and suddenly pull out this obsolete law.

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