Eric Schultz2d ago

RE: https://social.treehouse.systems/@wwahammy/116264430375745593

US government in 1996: strong encryption is a munition and you can go to prison for years if you export

FOSS engineers: hey so only use this if you're in the US but we'll give instructions for how to do it otherwise 😉

California in 2026: we're passing a law that allows the AG to sue OS providers in civil court if they don't implement age verification in order to restrict Apple, Google, Facebook and the worst companies in the world.

FOSS Engineers: OMG THEY MIGHT COME AFTER OUR LINUX LAPTOP VENDORS WHO HAVE LIKE 3 TOTAL CUSTOMERS WE SHOULD HAVE IMPLEMENTED AGE GATING YESTERDAY I PROMISE WE'RE NOT CHALLENGING YOUR AUTHORITY GOVERNOR NEWSOM

Show threadEric Schultz2d ago
And to be clear, I'm old enough to remember when strong encryption was a munitions, I'm speaking about these actions from first hand and near-first hand knowledge
Show threadPhilip Mallegol-Hansen
@wwahammy When I started at Google in 2016 I had to sign a bunch of export control paperwork because I *might* be able to find some encryption algorithm somewhere in the VCS I guess.
Mar 21 at 3:39pmWeb