These court cases seek to eliminate U.S. government regulations that make Internet encryption software and technology more cumbersome to publish or send than the same items when published in other media. While the Administration has taken a step in the right direction with its latest revisions, the fundamental constitutional defects of the encryption export regime have not been remedied. Yet people may freely send the same information anywhere on paper. Software publishers can be fined or imprisoned for helping people to use their code. These same limitations do not apply to non-encryption source code.
Encryption is a method for scrambling data in order to make electronic communications more secure.
As more computer users employ encryption to protect the privacy of their e-messages and documents, the U.S. government has until now demanded guaranteed easy access to the content of Internet communications. In a well-publicized court case, mathematician Daniel J. Bernstein has challenged the export control laws on encryption on First Amendment grounds. Professor Bernstein claims that his right to publish his own encryption software and share his research results with others over the Internet is being unconstitutionally restricted by the government's controls. Bernstein won his case at the trial level, and won an appeal in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. A similar case challenging the constitutionality of the export rules was brought by the ACLU of Ohio on behalf of Ohio law professor Peter Junger, who wished to publish an electronic version of an encryption program he wrote.