On Tue Aug 17 18:21:13 1999, Aviram Jenik wrote about "Re: Encryption law in Israel":
> That's totally untrue. This law is rather new (from the 70s I think), and
> it's very much enforced. Every company that produces software that uses
> encryption of some kind has to obtain a special permit before being able to
> sell it. There are a few cases I know of, of companies who were forced to
> stop developing and wait for the wheels of beurocracy to produce the permit.
> However, the Shabak could care less about your Linux box and whether or not
> it runs SSH. They are worried about companies like Checkpoint producing
> 'computerized weapons' in the form of strong encryption VPNs. You can argue
> from now until the end of times on whether or not it's okay in a democracy,
> but fact is: It's the law.
> Again, no need for rm -rf /. The Shabak won't come knocking at your door and
> you probably have nothing to worry about unless you're selling software with
> strong encryption, or you're administrating a govermental network.
You are missing a very important point: this law *DID* affect me: the
sysadmin I was talking about asked me to use DES encryption on his system
and not the globally-accepted encryption methods (DES is not compiled into
ssh servers by default!).
Personally I don't care for the shabak to look around my computer - I have
nothing to hide - but I don't want crackers to look around my computer!
I really resent the ease at which people say "you have nothing to worry
about this law if.." or "this law is never enforced". The fact that this
law exists may mean my use of SSH (I've been using it for 4 years)
PGP (I've been using it for about 8 years), and perhaps other things (SSL,
SET, etc.) may have been illegal. I'm sure the police and Praklitut have
better things to do than to indict me for personal encryption use, but who
knows, maybe sometime in the future the police will go after somebody
they don't like (e.g., some police-unfriendly reporter) with such rediculous
charges.
I'm not a criminal, and I don't want any of my daily actions to be
deemed illegal. I think that this is a basic right in a democracy.
P.S. the URL quoted by someone in a previous message seems to imply that
all "unauthorized" use of encryption is illegal, including personal use
(I didn't see any mention of such an exception), but that the authorities
have "guidelines" not prosecute people using "weak" encryption. Another
person said that these guidelines are actually part of the law. So
which is true?
--
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Israel Institute of Technology | ######## # ###### | Nadav. ;)
WWW page: http://harel.org.il/nadav ICQ #13349191
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