• Clay_pidgin@sh.itjust.works
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    5 months ago

    09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0

    A cryptographic key for Blu-Rays. The MPAA used to send out C&Ds and DMCA takedowns left and right to hide this code.

  • jbrjake@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    When the first DVD cracking util was released, DeCSS, it violated the DMCA and people were getting sued and threatened with felonies for sharing it. Very quickly people figured out loopholes to make it an archivable creative work, like putting it on tshirts and encoding it as a prime number: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_prime

    • neidu3@sh.itjust.works
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      5 months ago

      Not just PGP, but any encryption strength above a certain level was considered “munitions” from a legal standpoint. Because of this, finding a windows Ssh client was a PITA for quite a while.

      • Melvin_Ferd@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        Wait does imply that other encryption is broken since what would it matter if you used encryption greater than something the government allowed you to

        • neidu3@sh.itjust.works
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          5 months ago

          Nah, this was ages ago. I don’t remember the exact encryption strength, but it was pretty low, even by yesteryear standards. This was a remnant from when cryptography was ruled by whichever government could find the biggest autistic savant.

          • Em Adespoton@lemmy.ca
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            5 months ago

            I believe the encryption restrictions were relaxed in 1998.

            However, certification for import/export of nuclear weapons and other dangerous goods was still needed for strong encryption (such as phone SIM cards) as recently as 2006. To get on that list of people who could legally transport SIM cards not for personal use over the US border, you needed the same background check and government clearance as someone transporting enriched uranium.

        • Treczoks@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          There was a limit on key strength at 40 bits. Americans were allowed 56 bits (OK, they didn’t really get the full 56 bits, but that is another story). The Electronic Frontier Foundation built “Deep Crack” in 1998, a custom machine that broke the 56 bit DES in two seconds, so it probably would have taken them 1/8 second to crack the 40 bit. This happened when the ban was still active.

          This led to two movements: creative export and hosting of >40 bit algorithms outside the US, and development of better algorithms outside the US, like Rijndaal, SERPENT, IDEA, E2, and other non-US AES-candidates.

        • WolfLink@sh.itjust.works
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          5 months ago

          All encryption can be brute forced, the point of having a large key size is to make the compute effort needed to brute force the key impractical.

          “Impractical” for an individual, even one that has several very powerful computers (by DIY standards) is a much lower bar than impractical for a government, that might use huge supercomputing clusters or hardware designed specifically for brute forcing encryption.

          Note that the recommended key size to protect from “individual” tier hackers has increased over the years as the power of the average personal computer has increased.

  • jrs100000@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    War plans. Classified information in general will cause some trouble, but mostly for the person who leaked it. War plans, on the other hand, will be recovered by any means necessary, up to and including lethal force without warning.

    • Hugin@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      Or accessing it if you have a security clearance. I’m not allowed the look at any of the documents Snowden leaked. Because even though they are easily obtained they have not been declasified. I don’t have a need to know or the necessary SC.

        • shalafi@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          Seems you’re correct. So how are poppy seeds so common if they’re Papaver somniferum? Weird.

          • antlion@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            5 months ago

            It’s all about ignorance and intent. If you grow P.somniferum ornamentally, and/or shake it out for seeds it’s fine. You can even sell the dried pods for floral arrangements. But if you make tea out of the dried pods, or milk the latex it’s illegal. Which is insane since the pharmaceutical opioids are so much more harmful and dangerous.

  • TheKracken@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    I’d say classified documents if you don’t have the clearance and process to legally possess them

  • Mighty@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    So much. I mean that’s what the book burning was all about. There’s blacklisted authors. There’s state secrets. It might be information that’s legal only for certain people. I mean, if we’re being pedantic, it’s illegal for you to have information about me if I’m not giving it to you.

  • supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz
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    5 months ago

    KEVIN Birmingham’s new book about the long censorship fight over James Joyce’s Ulysses braids eight or nine good stories into one mighty strand.

    It’s about women’s rights and heroic female editors, the First World War, anarchism and modernism, tenderness and syphilis, moral panic and about the Lost Generation and the tent it pitched at Sylvia Beach’s Paris bookstore. It isolates a great love story, that of Joyce and Nora Barnacle, one that comes with a finger-burning side order of some of the most cheerfully filthy correspondence in literary history.

    https://www.scotsman.com/arts-and-culture/the-battle-to-publish-james-joyces-ulysses-1531186

    And what a quest it was. “Ulysses” was illegal to own in most of the English-speaking world for more than a decade. It was banned, burned, debated, smuggled, and finally legalized following a 1933 court ruling. In Birmingham’s highly readable and erudite book, he infuses this story with drama, reminding us that the right to express oneself can never be taken for granted.

    Readers will quickly realize the immense scope of “The Most Dangerous Book.” Modernism, obscenity, the power once held by postal authorities, vice squads, 19th century English law, Joyce’s sex life and health problems, The Lost Generation, early literary magazines, Wall Street lawyers, the suffrage movement, anarchy in America, and even the Enlightenment are all seamlessly woven into this most fascinating tapestry.

    https://www.wbur.org/news/2014/06/13/kevin-birmingham-ulysses