What's gunna to happen when the American Federal Government starts prosecuting people for owning powerful computer hardware and software?

Comments

• adespoton@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  You make it sound like this is the first time it’s happened.

  Look up Phil Zimmerman and PGP back in the 1990s.

  Such computing power used to be classified under the same category as weapons -grade nuclear materials, and likely will be again.

  And most people won’t even notice.

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  • litchralee@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    Adding some color to this tidbit of history – because I don’t think the OP’s original question can even be meaningfully answered – one of the rationales for American regulations on exporting cryptography was to maintain a military advantage: if American computers are powerful enough to break weak encryption, but everyone else’s computers cannot break strong encryption, then it is a NOBUS capability that the USA and its allies have.

    If having been handed such a capability, the most logical thing to do is to hold onto it for as long as possible, and let the adversary struggle for a few decades to reduce the asymmetry. By the time the 2000s came around, computer capabilities were equalized enough that denying strong encryption stopped making much sense, in addition to being unworkable due to internet distribution.

    Which is why the tactic changed: with no more asymmetry, the new logical tactic is to actively contribute to making the strongest possible encryption possible, in collaboration with academics from anywhere and everywhere. This is when NIST started hosting competitions to select the next cryptographic algorithms, where the world’s top cryptographers and researchers would get each other’s work, as a supercharged form of peer-review. And as a result, everyone including friend or foe benefits from those cryptographically secure building blocks, as seen in TLS 1.3 or E2EE secure messaging.

    No doubt that the NSA or governments will still be paranoid about protecting their top secrets, but defense in depth means they have other methods to keep stuff secure, such as guarding an air-gapped network with armed soldiers. It’s just that the weakness of encryption is no longer a realistic attack vector in the 21st Century.

    Time has advanced, and new challenges arise.

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  • Semi_Hemi_Demigod@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    For a while there Apple’s Power Macs were classified as weapons because they were capable of a gigaflop youtu.be/XjkoYlpf3EA

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    • adespoton@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      <pedant>The S in GigaFLOPS is for seconds.</pedant>

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• 9point6@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  Nah never gonna happen, it’s easier to just price people out of ever owning it in the first place

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• Shimitar@downonthestreet.eu ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  Just connect a gun to the hardware and you are protected by the first amendment of course…

  It’s america, turn it to a firearm and you are fine.

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  • Witchfire@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    Unfortunately, the 2nd amendment has only historically been upheld when it’s about the right of Nazis to threaten minorities. The moment minorities get their hands on firearms, they suddenly care about gun control.

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    • Shimitar@downonthestreet.eu ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      What if minorities where shooting into schools?

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• schwim@piefed.zip ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  Not a stupid question but pretty silly to think anyone could answer this with anything more than an uninformed wild-ass guess.

  We’ll build robots out of our microwaves and refrigerators to start an uprising?

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  • unitedwithme@lemmy.today ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    Great movie concept

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• SuiXi3D@fedia.io ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  Mesh networks of lower power devices will come to exist and do the exact same things via distributed computing.

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• LovableSidekick@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  Modern Americans will complain but they won’t significantly resist, because actual resistance is so much harder than typing.

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• TheFogan@programming.dev ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  What if instead they feed into every bubble to try and render powerful computer hardware outside the price range of anyone but millionares. While gradually encouraging a more, data center based control system so that rather than getting PC hardware ourselves… we’ll instead only be able to afford basic cheap thin clients, made to connect to a more powerful virtual machine that is capable of running games or anything that requires any power.

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• _haha_oh_wow_@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  Yep, 100%: Don’t come between a nerd and their gaming rig.

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• LovableSidekick@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  Imagine if somebody inventd a replicator!

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• hobata@lemmy.ml ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  They will be successful in this endeavor.

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  • LeftLeaningFreedomFighters@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    Alot of innocent people are going to lose everything as a result.

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• garbage_world@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  Ultimate slippery slope

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• AlecSadler@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  Nah, Americans’ are weak. Too busy with social media and shit to do anything. I’ve been trying to recruit people for violent reformation for months now and nobody is interested. Everyone either thinks the next election will fix things or are too afraid to take action.

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• cerebralhawks@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  So, Macs? Bonus: they don’t come with Microsoft software or Google software

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