It ended not with a bang, but a whimper. Thanks to a strategy of strategic amelioration of rules whenever they looked about to be struck down, combined with judicious promises not to prosecute people who were otherwise covered by the letter of the law, the US government has dodged the whole hail of bullets that was the Bernstein cryptography case. The proceedings produced a great opinion — Bernstein v. U.S. Dept. of Justice, 176 F.3d 1132 (9th Cir. 1999), but it was withdrawn, Bernstein v. U.S. Dept. of Justice, 192 F.3d 1308 (9th Cir. 1999) pending an en banc hearing that never happened. Then it was remanded.
Now comes news that, the Bernstein Cryptography Case Is Dismissed.
Chicago, 15 October 2003 – The longest-running court case against the government's encryption regulations has come to an end, for now.
The regulations were challenged by Daniel J. Bernstein, a professor of mathematics, statistics, and computer science at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Bernstein filed his lawsuit in February 1995 and won four court decisions against the constitutionality of the government's previous regulations.
In an October 2002 court hearing on the current encryption regulations, Department of Justice attorney Tony Coppolino told the court that the government would not enforce several portions of the regulations.
“I can assure you that the regulatory authority does not want [researchers who are collaborating at conferences] sending us an e-mail every time they change something in an algorithm,'' Coppolino told the court. Coppolino also said that commmercial book publishers and assembly-language publishers did not need to obtain licenses.
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