[FYI] IT security to become 'political battleground'
<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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