Is there or has there ever been information illegal to possess or have?
from Patnou@lemmy.world to nostupidquestions@lemmy.world on 15 Sep 2025 20:48
https://lemmy.world/post/35971933
from Patnou@lemmy.world to nostupidquestions@lemmy.world on 15 Sep 2025 20:48
https://lemmy.world/post/35971933
#nostupidquestions
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For a while it was illegal to export Pretty Good Privacy, or PGP from the US.
FTP servers in the US removed it for fear of legal action.
So I imported it from a University in Scotland. đ
www.openpgp.org
Not just PGP, but any encryption strength above a certain level was considered âmunitionsâ from a legal standpoint. Because of this, finding a windows Ssh client was a PITA for quite a while.
Wait does imply that other encryption is broken since what would it matter if you used encryption greater than something the government allowed you to
Nah, this was ages ago. I donât remember the exact encryption strength, but it was pretty low, even by yesteryear standards. This was a remnant from when cryptography was ruled by whichever government could find the biggest autistic savant.
I believe the encryption restrictions were relaxed in 1998.
However, certification for import/export of nuclear weapons and other dangerous goods was still needed for strong encryption (such as phone SIM cards) as recently as 2006. To get on that list of people who could legally transport SIM cards not for personal use over the US border, you needed the same background check and government clearance as someone transporting enriched uranium.
There was a limit on key strength at 40 bits. Americans were allowed 56 bits (OK, they didnât really get the full 56 bits, but that is another story). The Electronic Frontier Foundation built âDeep Crackâ in 1998, a custom machine that broke the 56 bit DES in two seconds, so it probably would have taken them 1/8 second to crack the 40 bit. This happened when the ban was still active.
This led to two movements: creative export and hosting of >40 bit algorithms outside the US, and development of better algorithms outside the US, like Rijndaal, SERPENT, IDEA, E2, and other non-US AES-candidates.
All encryption can be brute forced, the point of having a large key size is to make the compute effort needed to brute force the key impractical.
âImpracticalâ for an individual, even one that has several very powerful computers (by DIY standards) is a much lower bar than impractical for a government, that might use huge supercomputing clusters or hardware designed specifically for brute forcing encryption.
Note that the recommended key size to protect from âindividualâ tier hackers has increased over the years as the power of the average personal computer has increased.
scotsman.com/âŚ/the-battle-to-publish-james-joycesâŚ
www.wbur.org/news/âŚ/kevin-birmingham-ulysses
So much. I mean thatâs what the book burning was all about. Thereâs blacklisted authors. Thereâs state secrets. It might be information thatâs legal only for certain people. I mean, if weâre being pedantic, itâs illegal for you to have information about me if Iâm not giving it to you.
child pornography would fit this description
Do you really need this âinformationâ tho?
Not seeing the relevance of need at all? It seems like a legit answer to the question, at least inasmuch as any specific content or documents can be, as opposed to forbidden knowledge/ideas like crypto key numbers or (in the past) the concept of a gun-type fission bomb.
Of course youâre right it was just a joke
In the US itâs illegal to grow poppy if you know what it is
They canât prove I know what it is tho. đ
âWhat do you mean I had to know because I was making heroin? You mean my calming sleepy flower juice from those cool flowers I found?â
You need to use a razor to bleed the poppies for their latex, which is opium.
Iâd say if youâre found with poppies that youâve done this to then thereâs a very good chance you knew what you were doing.
The little seeds on bagels?
Yup
ButâŚwhy are bagel seeds illegal to grow? And why arenât bagel producers getting in legal trouble?
nice try! you canât prove that I know anything!
Similar to growing hemp instead of cannabis. Though Iâm not that familiar with the specifics of different poppy strains
Poppy seeds grow into opium plants if you put them in the ground.
Only the opium poppy, Papaver somniferum. The rest are just fine.
What are you talking about thatâs the breadseed poppy.
Seems youâre correct. So how are poppy seeds so common if theyâre Papaver somniferum? Weird.
Itâs all about ignorance and intent. If you grow P.somniferum ornamentally, and/or shake it out for seeds itâs fine. You can even sell the dried pods for floral arrangements. But if you make tea out of the dried pods, or milk the latex itâs illegal. Which is insane since the pharmaceutical opioids are so much more harmful and dangerous.
When the first DVD cracking util was released, DeCSS, it violated the DMCA and people were getting sued and threatened with felonies for sharing it. Very quickly people figured out loopholes to make it an archivable creative work, like putting it on tshirts and encoding it as a prime number: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_prime
I remember an mp3 going around where a guy turned it into a song, complete with the chorus, âI donât like the DMCA.â
I had a green DeCSS shirt. It was awesome. I ditched it while coming over the border.
High level leaks of classified material is the first example that comes to mind. The raw Wikileaks data, for example, was widely accessible and easily found by anyone with a quick search, and yet possessing that material was technically illegal, because it was never declassified.
Julian Assange has something to say about this.
Edward Snowden has something to say about this.
Reality Winner has something to say about this.
Chelsea Manning has something to say about this.
Woodward and Bernstein had something to say about this.
No doubt. It being illegal doesnât mean it wasnât morally justified and right in most cases. Just means it took more courage and personal risk to do the right thing.
Youâve been banned from /r/warthunderforums
Iâd say classified documents if you donât have the clearance and process to legally possess them
Just keep them in your bathroom and no one would ever find them.
Literally some of the 34 things Trump was convicted of has to do with this!
So itâs illegal, but nothing comes of getting convicted. No actual consequences.
Got it.
Only if you have money and/or power, tho. If youâre just some guy, youâre 100â fucked.
Oh interesting, should I look up Trunp rule 34 for more information on this?
Do it
Having info on the heliocentric solar system could land you in a dungeon or worse back in the day.
Even the Catholic church does not do that anymore. With some American Evangelicals, Iâm not that sureâŚ
"Pornography" was illegal to own. Things like abortion information or anything mentioning homosexuality was pornographic.
War plans. Classified information in general will cause some trouble, but mostly for the person who leaked it. War plans, on the other hand, will be recovered by any means necessary, up to and including lethal force without warning.
Or accessing it if you have a security clearance. Iâm not allowed the look at any of the documents Snowden leaked. Because even though they are easily obtained they have not been declasified. I donât have a need to know or the necessary SC.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
A cryptographic key for Blu-Rays. The MPAA used to send out C&Ds and DMCA takedowns left and right to hide this code.
I remember when this Streisanded hard on Digg. Good times.
Copyright is civil, not criminal. Oh but I guess the DMCA added some criminal elements⌠Still, requires more than posting a string of octets.
In the same vane, the root keys for the playstation 3 being released by some hacker caused a lot of hubub from sony.
Instructions how to build a nuclear bomb.
They have been so very illegal during the very first years of the internet that the scanning of content by police and 3 letter agencies was invented especially because of that.
Then many people made fun of the fact, for example by putting fake hints into the footers of their e-mails or forum posts, and maybe this was the beginning of all memes.
Yeah, if you need actual instructions to build a nuclear bomb, you will not nearly be able to build a nuclear bomb
Beginning of internet memes? Maybe. Iâd have to look up when that happened. Beginning of memes as a whole? That would be off by several thousand years at a minimum, just going by ones archaeologists have already found.
This video goes over some things that are illegal to say
Rip Trevor Moore. He burned too bright for this world.
Died choking on his own dick
Under no circumstances should crabs be taught to read. There are consequences.
Or what
In Australia the anarchist cookbook is a banned book. We only surprisingly recently unbanned books like 1984 and brave new world.
I think the Epstein files would cause a bit of a ruckus. I donât know if it is illegal to possess but certainly would get you in trouble.
Anarchistâs cookbook. Looked it up not illegal but discouraged
<img alt="" src="https://sh.itjust.works/pictrs/image/4d975ae0-4dd6-4892-891f-ca6838a45647.jpeg">
âŚwikipedia.org/âŚ/Export_of_cryptography_from_the_âŚ
Oh yes. In the early days of pirating, it was illegal to possess MP3s of music you didn't 'own' copies of.
There used to also have been and still is, legal fighting about the legality of having copies of games no longer in circulation. We have been seeing it now where Nintendo aims at people hosting file copies of some of their IPs.
They're always going to be illegal to have laying around your computer, regardless of your stance. Unless you buy said MP3s from something like Apple's store or Amazon.
Yes? Classified information, confidential customer data, etc
Illegal primes. Used for encryption