The skinny: The EFF’s goal was to expose the folly of the government’s export system, which forbids companies to ship strong encryption overseas. The Data Encryption Standard (DES), which uses a 56-bit key (the more bits, the stronger the protection), has been around for years. But the United States, except in special cases, won’t let companies like Microsoft put it in products they ship around the world. Law-enforcement officials say that if DES-level privacy software was in use, their crime-fighting efforts would be greatly hampered. Buyers, however, can get the strong stuff from foreign companies, and domestic companies lose business. The EFF effort confirms what scientists have been saying for years: in an era of fast, cheap computers we need stronger codes. The DES Cracker will give anyone pause who relies on DES for privacy. Everyone, it seems, except certain government officials. ““This doesn’t change much from the law-enforcement perspective,’’ says U.S. Associate Deputy Attorney General Robert Litt, who defends current export laws.
