Introduction.

This post is dedicated to an overview of the US export restrictions of strong encryption systems. We present several arguments for the presence of such restrictions. After that, we analyse possible arguments of companies, individuals or event the whole countries for being against such export restrictions. Finally, we move to the highly controversial question, which is important for the future of the Internet: should the government control the Internet?

Reasons for export restrictions.

1. The first reason is obviously terrorist threat. The terrorist organizations may use strong encryption to plan and coordinate their operations. Therefore, it is vital task for the US (as well as other countries) to decrypt messages between terrorists in order to prevent catastrophes like 9/11 in the future. The only possible solution is to ban the export to countries, where terrorist can purchase the strong encryption systems. However, the problem is that terrorists organizations remain powerful and they can obtain such systems probably even in the USA through “fake” companies, for example.

2. The closely related reason is prevention of secret, coded correspondence among international criminal organizations and individuals. Assumingly, if there is a restriction, the large criminal organizations will not be able to make the correspondence secret enough.
3. No doubt, the USA wants to maintain the position of World’s superpower. Since Soviet Union times the USA was considered as only available protection against “USSR aggression”. The USSR has vanished, but the States still want to be perceived as guards of the whole world. So the only possible solution for preserving the leading role of superpower is to posses something which other countries cannot easily copy. Years ago it was nuclear bombs. Now, in the digital society, it is information that matters and especially methods how to protect sensitive information. Therefore, USA simply wants to be able to read messages of other individuals/organizations/countries, while being intact by others.
4. Business – related issues. Banning the export of strong encryption systems, the US government could have a possibility to “read” correspondence of suspicious multinational companies, e.g. business consortia for price discrimination (when large multinational companies agree on illegal actions, e.g. price discrimination and communicate via secured networks).

Why should be against it

Consider that the US government wants to restrict the export of strong encryption systems. This will lead to an unbalanced situation since no other country would have access to those valuable systems. Furthermore, major companies and expertises specialised in encryption are located in the USA. Just like Cisco system. Rest of the world will feel really unsatisfied and discriminated when US is the one to possess all the major information. In this way US can also keep their role as been the most powerful country in the world. Perhaps they want to be above others in some way. With strong encryption system US will be able to effectively “read” lot of sensitive information outside US, meanwhile others can’t decrypt the codes of USA. This can give huge competitive advance for companies located in US territory. The companies inside US can use strong encryptions to protect their sensitive information. However, companies in Europe for example do not have opportunity to use such an effective system to protect their sensitive information.

The fact that they do not want to export these systems will hurt them in some ways. The companies specialised in this field (of strong encryption) will definitely loose customers. USA is just one country and there definitely would be potential customers around the world. Furthermore, by loosing potential customers they will also loose potential profits. Naturally they do not want that these strong encryption systems would be available for every country. Some compromise should be made so that solution could be obtained. One of possible solution is to apply restrictions to limited number of countries such as North Korea and Afghanistan.

Should Government control the Internet?

This matter is not just black and white and is really hard to answer. This matter definitely divides people into sides. On the other hand china already has something related to this. They have build huge countrywide firewall. In this way they can monitor everything that goes out and more importantly everything that comes in.
Controlling Internet inside country is more difficult. However, some matters should be controlled, but who has the right to decide on that. Such things could be Copyright infringements and other legal issues. Distribution of guns, explosives and drugs is more serious issue. As it has been witnessed is US and also in Finland not everyone should have the access to guns. Shootings in places like schools could maybe be prevented in some cases.
Also issues that are potentially dangerous to the welfare and prosperity of the society. Specially matters concerning children should be taken seriously like child porn.

Goivernment of many countries (Cuba, Iran, China etc) are already controlling the Internet, cencoring the cyperspace for anti-government political statements. Also, despite common misunderstandings, the Internet is quite easy to contol (consider content blocking, nation-wide firewalls). Much of this control is targeted to suppress the opposition in totalitarian countires and prevent access to anti-government websites.

However, we believe that the main aim of the government should be the creation of a legal framework for the Internet. Those issues, that can endanger the welfare of society, such as illegal drug distribution, child pornography, weapons distribution sites should be considered as illegal and the correponding laws should be designed. However, fundamnetal rights of human beings, such as freedom of speech/expression should be still valid, and people should have the chance to present their opinions, even very critical ones.

We believe that unregulated Internet is like a powerful explosive with already running timer. Certain actions should be taken to control the Intenet even withinb the borders of a country throug creation of adequate legal framework. Importantly, the framework should be created in cooperation with many representatives of society, including governmnets, human rights advocates, lawyers, technical specialist and other individuals and organisations. Moreover, every government’s action toward the regulation of the Internet should be immediately made public, explained well and could be possible to protest and revoke in case of society’s disagreemnet.

The final thouhgt: the morale and values of a person are the best guards of the person. Therefore, instead of banning everything in the Internet governemnets should put every effort to increase moral and universally-accepted human values in the society, even thoug this is a very challenging task.