By Rachel Chalmers

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is frankly overjoyed that a judge has ruled US export bans on cryptographic software unconstitutional. Daniel Bernstein, a math professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, sued the government in 1995 for refusing him a license to publish his encryption program, Snuffle, on the web. He argued that software is language and that the export bans violate his right to free speech.

We sponsored Professor Dan Bernstein’s case because of its importance to society, free expression, electronic commerce and privacy in the digital world, said EFF president and executive director Tara Lemmey. The government tried to argue that export control laws on encryption are necessary to protect US national security. It said that the bans are narrowly tailored to serve a substantial government interest. But the court ruled that the present regime vests boundless discretion in government officials and lacks adequate procedural safeguards.

Never has our ability to shield our affairs from prying eyes been at such a low ebb, wrote Judge Betty Fletcher in the ruling. The availability and use of secure encryption may offer an opportunity to reclaim some portion of the privacy we have lost. Government efforts to control encryption thus may well implicate not only the First Amendment rights of cryptographers intent on pushing the boundaries of their science, but also the constitutional rights of each of us as potential recipients of encryption’s bounty.

The US government has wielded these export controls to deliberately eliminate privacy for ordinary people, claimed EFF co-founder John Gilmore. The controls created wireless phones that scanners can hear, email that’s easy to intercept, and unsecured national infrastructure that leaves us all vulnerable… Today’s ruling is a giant step towards a sane policy.

Nevertheless, the EFF’s win is only of one battle, not of the war. The government is expected to ask for a stay of ruling pending appeal. That hasn’t prevented gleeful cryptographers and cypherpunks from publishing what they consider to be freshly- legal encryption programs and information all over the world wide web. The International Cryptography Freedom page (http://jya.com/crypto-free.htm) already runs to dozens of screens full of links to new sites. It’s hoping to compile a directory of one thousand free cryptography sites before the hapless government can strike back.