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Security just got worse, if you are American
by Graham Parks
 Knowledge of computer and network security has now become an important part of an
administrators job. Luckily the resources to learn about such things are more common now than they were several years back. Or at least they are if you are not American. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act now affects information available to U.S. network administrators.
I am going to keep this short and provide links to other articles here because I do not want to leave myself open to any sort of legal action.
The DCMA makes it illegal for U.S. citizens to produce or use many kinds of software. Unfortunately they have gone one step further and are taking legal action against foreign nationals who produce such software even if its legal to do so in that person's country. This means that sitting here in the UK, writing a piece of software, and publishing it on the net might bring the U.S. legal system down on my head, despite the fact that it is legal to do so here and I have never even had a holiday in the U.S.
There is now a site called www.thefreeworld.net. To view certain information you have to accept a license agreement in which states
By continuing you warrant that you:
* are not a citizen of the USA.
* are not under US jurisdiction, including embassies, naval
vessels, military bases and other areas of US jurisdiction.
* are permitted to import security information that may include information that can be used to subvert
copy or content protection, even though this is not the primary purpose of the supply of this information.
* are not obtaining the information with the intent to
commit a crime.
* understand the information is provided without fee and without warranty
and/or guarantee of correctness of any kind.
* acknowledge that by downloading the data outside of the European Union you are performing an act of importation.
RedHat are now using this site. See www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/27636.html. It seems they are not allowed to publish the full details of one of their security fixes.
See in.tech.yahoo.com/021005/137/1w2bq.html for a really interesting story on the jailing of a Russian so called hacker. The interesting point here is that the Russian Security Service claim that the FBI broke Russian Law in order to trap the hacker. Apparently that is OK to do, according to a U.S.
judge.
I do not think the U.S. government is not going to win many new friends with this sort of action.
I do have further views on this, but looking at the very careful wording of other articles regarding this matter, I think I will keep them to myself for now.
Graham
Parks
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