Clear-Text Patch? was: Re: OpenSSH 5.1: call for testing

[Roumen Petrov]

Dan Yefimov wrote:
> On Wed, 9 Jul 2008, Curt, WE7U wrote:
> 
>>>> The amateur radio people still need this tweak in order to use
>>>> OpenSSH over ham radio data links.  The FCC does not allow
>>>> encryption of data on our frequencies, but does allow encryption for
>>>> authentication purposes.
>>> I'm sorry about your government's stupid laws, but I think that there
>>> is much potential for users to harm themselves if we were to add the
>>> null cipher.
>> It's likely that your government or other nearby governments have
>> similar "stupid" laws for amateur radio.  Many do.  Radio links know
>> no political boundaries, so encryption over radio links tends to
>> make the powers-that-be nervous and they legislate against it.
>> Either that or they borrowed bits from FCC regulations which is also
>> common.
>>
> Hmm. Strange point. Internet due to it's nature knows no political boundaries 
> too, but AFAIK no country prohibits encrypted traffic over it. 

The rule is not same for encrypted radio communications.


> I don't in any 
> way vote against including the none cipher in the OpenSSH distribution, but I 
> think that the problem of such actually stupid regulations would be much better 
> solved in a legislative way.

May be encrypted radio communications pass under rules for dual-use 
technologies.


Roumen