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Conservatives Plan to Close Down e-Commerce

Well ... that's not what they are presenting it as.   Instead they are talking about banning encryption.   See here.

When I say I am a cryptographer I mean that I implemented the second version of the SSL (now TLS) encryption system in the world after Netscape back in 1995.  I have written the software for RSA encryption.

What would it mean to ban encryption?

Well the most obvious use of encryption is for web interfaces with the https:// type of URL.   http:// is hyper text transfer protocol (without encryption) and https is with encryption.

Properly implemented it is secure.  It is used for Hotmail (now outlook.com), facebook, twitters and all electronic communications including online banking.

If you want to find out whether you are using encryption or not just look at the url.

Hence if they are aiming to ban encryption then they want to stop all e-commerce as well because it all uses encryption.




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