And This is Why Government Has No Business Dictating Computer Security

Governments can do an incredible amount of good. They provide services for the public good, such as law enforcement, transportation management, a legal framework, and so much more.

But government as an institution, or set of institutions, can also be incredibly stupid, especially where foresight is required. Especially in the realm of technology, which changes far more quickly than any government has the will to adapt.

So now we have a security hole in our web browsers, courtesy of the U.S. Government, which mandated that software products (such as web browsers) couldn’t use strong encryption

This is the same battle that Phil Zimmerman, author of PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) encryption, fought years ago after open-sourcing his algorithm and in doing so made it available to the world. It turned out that Zimmerman was right, and the government was wrong. In this case, wrong enough to cause potential harm to millions of computer users.

At this point, the government doesn’t seem to be interested in enforcing this any more, but some web browsers are still delivered with weak security. It was a vestige of their intent to comply with the law, and never removed as the law became, well, more flexible. But now it is doing some significant damage.

I am reminded, in a reverse way, of Frank Herbert’s science fiction character Jorj X. McKie, a card-carrying member of the Bureau of Saboteurs, a multi-planet government agency whose role was to, well, sabotage government. In this hypothetical future sphere, it needed to do so because government had become too fast, too efficient, and less deliberative in passing and enforcing laws. The Saboteurs threw a monkey wrench into government, slowing down the process.

But today we need to speed up government. Defining the boundaries of government is a debate that will continue on indefinitely. I generally agree that government should be a participant in this process. But it needs to be an informed and active participant, and not a domineering old grandparent.