SSSCA = Security Systems Standards and Certification Act In recent postings, I have mentioned various proposed laws that could be applied against open source movement and which, in any case, have enormous impact upon freedom of speech in coding software. SSSCA is one of them.
It calls for the requirement that all "interactive devices" comply with a "security standard" to be established for ensuring the protection of digital intellectual property rights. This implies some significant changes for hardware via firmware changes to enforce those standards, pressures for operating systems not to allow hacks and modifications to bypass the standards, etc. Not the end of the open source at all but still a hassle. It might result in open source development moving more to outside of the USA. With various calls for anti-terrorism security measures, we may see an expansion of the "security standards" in SSSCA or other laws for things such as cryptography restrictions, stronger identification of machines being used for Internet communications, etc. For more info, check... ACM - Association for Computing Machinery's letter showing the problems with the SSSCA: http://www.acm.org/usacm/SSSCA-letter.html http://www.politechbot.com/p-02591.html (more likely to be up permanently) Background references on the SSSCA and related matters from Politech maillist: http://www.politechbot.com/cgi-bin/politech.cgi?name=sssca This item is an excellent intro and reference for the SSSCA: http://www.politechbot.com/p-02486.html J.D. Abolins (living La Vida "X-Files")
