[Cryptography] hard to trust all those root CAs

[Jerry Leichter]

On Jul 27, 2014, at 7:23 AM, ianG <iang at iang.org> wrote:
>> The comment I heard on this from a very experienced, very tech-savvy lawyer was:  I would have loved to take this case back when I was a prosecutor (making it quite clear that he was sure he would win).
> ...
>> The prosecutor's view will be:  *You* deliberately put yourself in a situation where to obey the law requires you to keep publishing. It's not the law's problem. You get to live with the consequences of your decisions. 
> Ah.  So if you publish you are in breach of your contract (your
> problem), if stop publishing you are in breach of the law.  Got it.
> 
> And in general, contempt of court, because you deliberately put yourself
> in a situation to break the law.
My interpretation - the lawyer's comment was brief and without detail.

You'll often see complaints that "this law is inconsistent with the contracts I've made with my customers" or "this law makes it impossible for me to make money" or "it's impossible for my business to comply both with law A and law B".  When you get comments like this, it's usually with the implication "...therefor the law is invalid".  But in fact the *correct* implication is "...therefor I need to find another business to run."

That's not to say the law might not be invalid!  But there would have to be *other reasons* beyond "it puts me out of business".  After all, street corner heroin dealers - and clear fraudsters - could make the same arguments.

                                                        -- Jerry