NSA Suite B Cryptography

[Steven M. Bellovin]

In message <4350A748.6000007 at sidney.com>, Sidney Markowitz writes:
>
>The possible twist that I see is if the NSA declares that any freely
>available open source software that interoperates with Suite B is by
>definition "in support of US national security interests" and therefore
>automatically gets one of their sublicenses. That would effectively
>remove the patent encumbrance for GPL code. There would still be patent
>restrictions on the code, but they would not apply to open source freely
>redistributable code, therefore would not get in the way of the GPL.

I strongly suspect that Certicom would sue if NSA tried that.

>So it still comes down to what I think is the important point: BSD
>licensed Suite B code may be possible, GPL'd Suite B code is not
>possible unless Certicom makes appropriate free license to the patents
>available for software licensed under GPL.
>
I think that that's a fair summary.

		--Steven M. Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb



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