Allen P. Drummond wrote:
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My point is that the attempt to crack some crypto protected data is akin to burglary from my point of view.

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Actually, that is the wrong legal metaphor. Burglary requires physical intrusion to acquire the original item. Signal intelligence is more akin to photographing automobiles as they pass by along the highway; that is not a crime. The only acquition made is a passive image of the original.

When the conduit for the ciphertext is publicly accessible, even when technologically out of the reach of many, the collection of those images as they pass are considered valid. That's why cipher systems are used. To make the collection of those images either computationally foolheartly, or even better yet, decoys to consume computational effort.

Its not burglary. If a homeowner places his home possessions in the street, a public domain, anyone who finds and takes these possessions is not breaking any law. In fact the courts hold the homeowner responsible for his own stupidity in placing these items in the public domain. This is the legal metaphor for poorly protected data. Bandaid laws contort the situation to prevent this conclusion. That is the best we can do currently.


Allen P. Drummond wrote:
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Certain data has ownership rights and just because you might be able to uncover that data, does not give you the right to it.

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Yes. Most hacker law is legally weak too because they were made as bandaids to protect society from existing weak systems and the commerce involved in them. They really don't follow application of law in similar property cases but this is due to the lack of understanding of software and technical issues. The laws exist and they are largely bad laws. I advise abiding by all laws, good and bad.

Anyone has right to an image of the data that is extracted from public domains without involving illegal actions to acquire. That comes about by careless control to the protected data. Like propriety information, its protection is only as good as your efforts to keep it out of the hands of others.


Allen P. Drummond wrote:
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From the point of view of a person who designs products for sale you can see how these items need an avenue of protection. Data is no different.

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Data is quite different. It has no physical form as required by the laws you seek to apply. Data is little more than a rumor or a unsubstantiated claim. Its etherial. We are still trying to incorporate the needed concepts into our laws but I really think it will take two generations more.

I'm all for legal protections to intellectual property and it suffers the same etherial state.


Allen P. Drummond wrote:
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I mean gee.... we protect mail for this very reason!
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That is a bad application of the word protect. I've worked on systems that sort mail and spent a lot of time inside US postal facilities. I'm aware of both their attention to security and the overall quality of work performed. [Protect mail] is a social myth to dissuade interference with it. The laws are there to raise the stakes for offenders to reduce chaos.

All in all, that still doesn't make postal mail secure.

aka j