"""1988 or 1989 I think it was, it became an issue for DEC. DEC wanted to build a
multilevel secure operating system. According to them they had built one—a one level
secure operating system that would incorporate a whole bunch of strong encryption. And
they basically completely abandoned it, even after they had built it. Their stated reason
for doing that was they were told in no uncertain terms by the US government that they
simply wouldn’t be able to market it broadly outside the US.
it became a very big issue for them and they actually played quite a
role in the…let’s call it the battle with the government. I think it starts with the people
who pioneered the field publishing their papers. Suddenly discovering that there is this
large organization called the National Security Agency [NSA] that didn’t like it. So there
was sort of that phase. That was in the late seventies and early eighties. That firestorm got
calmed down when Inman, who was the NSA director at the time, said something like,
“Look, O.K., it won’t all be classified. What we’ll do is we’ll have some sort of a
committee to review papers [in cryptography, and cryptographic software—to classify
certain knowledge on the premise of national security interests]. There will be both
government and non-government people on the committee so you’ll be represented.”"""
http://conservancy.umn.edu/bitstream/ha
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