What to do about my husband?

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SeminoleGirl22

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My husband is somewhat of a computer and math genius, and 2 months ago he went to Portugal for a small conference get-together for people of his favorite programming language. His specialty I guess is encrypting and security.

While there, he met a guy from Spain who was good in encrypting too, and he helped my husband work out kinks in some encrypting program my husband was writing. They put it together, and made it available for people on the internet.

From what I can gather, this program mixes up text or messages in such a way that it would take a thousand years for a “super” computer to “de-scramble” it. It also makes it impossible to “tap into” any internet-to-internet phone call. Only people with this program can decipher what is being sent, and only if the other person allows it.

About a month ago, my husband was contacted by the Department of Homeland Security, demanding the method to descramble. They informed him that his program violated US regulations on encryption. He sent quite a quaint little letter back stating that the program was made outside the US. He signed the letter “Sig Heil, mine Furor”. He was increasingly become more agitated the last few weeks, and has angrily stated that he wants to go back to Portugal and write even more programs to “blank” off the Government.

-We are being audited by the IRS
-He was twice questioned by the FBI, and Office of the Inspector General.
-His security clearance for the Government was revoked, and he cannot work on contracts for them with his company anymore
-He was questioned by US Postal Inspectors because the letter he sent back contained very bad language
-He has spent days and days in the basement erasing his computer and burning DVDs.

The list goes on and on. A somewhat nice FBI agent told me that the program he wrote can be used by terrorists and criminals to avoid surveillance by the Government, and that this was a very, very serious matter. He refuses to just cooperate. He says it’s time to “fight back against dictators”.

Any suggestions as to what in the Lord’s name I should do?
 
I am sorry that your husband is being so unreasonable. Of course the government people are correct. Such a program would allow terrorists to communicate without worry of interception. The problem is your husband seems to distrust his own government more than he distrusts the terrorists. This is very sad. Certainly the government has every right to do whatever they have to do in order to obtain this information. It is their job to protect the citizens of this country, and hopefully your husband will wise up before he finds himself in a far worse situation than a few audits.

You may try to reason with him, but he sounds somewhat stubborn. Perhaps if you plead with him for your own safety and that of his family he will relent. Reason with him that if the US government is concerned about this, then other less reasonable governments will also become concerned as his program gets wider dissemination. They may not be as concerned with human rights as is the USA.

And I don’t think moving to another country will make this go away. He appears to have opened his own little Pandora’s box, and it would be wise to do all he can to render this program useless as quickly as possible.
 
psteichen said:
I am sorry that your husband is being so unreasonable. Of course the government people are correct. Such a program would allow terrorists to communicate without worry of interception.
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This type of software (such as GPG or PGP) is already widely available on the Internet (for free) to anyone who has a few spare seconds to download it. Everytime you buy something online, you are (hopefully!) using encryption technology that is almost impossible to break.

For some strange reason, the U.S. considers encryption technology to be a munition, just like bombs, missiles, and guns.

There was a case a few years back where a man wrote a book about encryption and included the source code for the examples in the book on a disk he packaged with the book. Our government, in its infinite wisdom, decided that he couldn’t sell the book with the disk to people outside the U.S., but he could sell the book itself. Anyone could take the time to time the source code in the book into their favorite editor.

The husband isn’t being unreasonable here, just foolish. The U.S. export regulations are unreasonable. The husband may well end up unjustly imprisioned.
 
Benedictus said:
For some strange reason, the U.S. considers encryption technology to be a munition, just like bombs, missiles, and guns.
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Strange? Codes and code breaking technologies have always been highly important strategic weapons. For a very simple example see the movie “Code Talkers”. It tells the story of a particular code we prised during WWII. The US military was willing to kill their own soldiers to prevent this code from being broken. That tells you how important codes are. Code breaking is equally important. Many people have been tortured throughout history to force them to give up the secrets of a code. Quite successfully many times. Modern encryption is just a fancy new code…and governments rightly go to very drastic measures to get the details.
 
Benedictus said:
There was a case a few years back where a man wrote a book about encryption and included the source code for the examples in the book on a disk he packaged with the book. Our government, in its infinite wisdom, decided that he couldn’t sell the book with the disk to people outside the U.S., but he could sell the book itself.
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From tclDES website:
“Many books on encryption, containing source code, are readily available. Ironically, these books [or webpages] have no restrictions on export due to the 1st Ammendment of the U.S. Constitution.”

Since your husband what we call “compiled” [made] the program outside the US, and as long as it is being hosted on a foreign webserver, it is outside the jurisdiction of the US.

The Inspecter General questioning you mention makes me strongly believe that this is more about internal matters of the government, rather than export of encryption. the OIG does not deal with International nor Interstate crimes. The Feds will be able to quickly determine that the program is not hosted on a US webserver, and will know there is nothing they can do. They can rattle his cage, but thats all.

If your husband has security clearance from the Feds, the OIG may be concerned that your husband’s program in part is derived from secrets or technologies he had access to.

Usually, anything above 512 bit SLL, RSA, SHA-1 or MD5 are considered to be regulated by the Feds. Ive read that there is 2048 bit libraries available, and this has made the NSA really, really, really nervous. If your husband went above and beyond that, its likely they would try and scare him because they themselves are scared they are falling behind.

If the FBI or OIG really had anything on him, he would have gotten a National Security letter, and he would already be is US custody. He may already have gotten one, which is why he might be backing everything on his computers up, and then destroying it.

You will definitely know when the Feds have something; they dont waste time in arresting or detaining. they try to intimidate, and if that does not work, then IRS auditing is a popular next move. After that does not work, expect for him to be put on the “no fly” TSA list. they might try to stop him from traveling outside the US where he can legally distribute this. but as long as he does not compile the program and THEN export it, there isnt a single thing that even the President can do.

Pure and simple: this is a 1st Amendment issue. Writing code like this is covered, and the government cannot superceed the Constitution with unreasonable search and seizure, nor supression of free idea exchange.
 
I find it telling that terrorists have murdered hundreds of people in Spain, and thousands in the United States. Why would people from those countries, especially, want to enable them to communicate with impunity?

Whatever the constitutional issues, your husband seems to be acting in a self-destructive manner. He’s working hard to ruin his professional life, and to plunge his entire family into chaos. To what purpose? Anger? Pride?
 
Benedictus said:
This type of software (such as GPG or PGP) is already widely available on the Internet (for free) to anyone who has a few spare seconds to download it. Everytime you buy something online, you are (hopefully!) using encryption technology that is almost impossible to break.

For some strange reason, the U.S. considers encryption technology to be a munition, just like bombs, missiles, and guns.

There was a case a few years back where a man wrote a book about encryption and included the source code for the examples in the book on a disk he packaged with the book. Our government, in its infinite wisdom, decided that he couldn’t sell the book with the disk to people outside the U.S., but he could sell the book itself. Anyone could take the time to time the source code in the book into their favorite editor.

The husband isn’t being unreasonable here, just foolish. The U.S. export regulations are unreasonable. The husband may well end up unjustly imprisioned.
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Lord knows our Government can use whatever excuse they want
 
Seminole Girl,

You certainly have my sympathy and my prayers. I know a bit about the subject of cryptography and, while I do not care to minimize your husband’s achievement, there are publicly available systems that can make codes that would take supercomputers thousands of years to decode. Without your husband’s program, the criminals and terrorists would just find something else to use. The subject of public-key cryptography is over a decade old.

I also know a little bit about computer geeks (being something of one myself) and for one thing I think your husband needs to sit down and make a decision as to whether he wants to spend the rest of his life as an American or as a citizen of another country. I can appreciate his distrust of the United States government, but frankly I don’t think there is another country in the world with a better government–and that will allow him to become a citizen. (I understand that most of Monte Carlo, for example, is under 24-hour camera surveillance.)

The bad language in the letter to the government and the erasing of his computer disks sounds more serious, though. It may be that your husband is showing signs of paranoia and would thus need professional help. I read a description once of computer programmers as “independent to the point of a mild paranoia” and I find this to be true in the people in the field that I have seen–including myself a couple of decades ago. It’s not rare.
  • Liberian
 
Sending letters containing foul language to the goverment is not a crime…though many may wish it was.

Also may I second the motion to get yourself a GOOD LAWYER…
In regards to the IRS audit…get yourselves a good CPA/Tax attorney.
 
if you husband had committed a crime. they wouldn’t be questioning, they’d be charging.

if any law enforcement comes to you and ASKs questions, the majority of people will volunteer more information than was originally ever asked for. law enforcement counts on this. If he had broken laws, then they’d charge him with the crime and offer him a deal upon telling them the code. The very fact they’ve DEMANDED a backdoor is nothing more than a plea to him. PLEASE tell us. because it sounds like they got nothing.

Get a lawyer if this keeps up. what can you do about the harrassement? not much. it is what it is. they’re using means at their disposal with the hopes that it will get to a point the payoff for keeping the decryption quiet isn’t worth the hassle anymore for you or your family…

they’re not getting fired up or enraged or personal about this. the government is just doing the job they’ve been charged with. protecting. If there was a strong encryption method the NSA couldn’t crack, it would not be good if some terrorist got his ‘go’ order via an encryption technique they couldn’t break. So there are very practical reasons for them to have a way to ‘peek’ and see if there is anything of tactical value in peoples encryptions…

I’ve done work for Homeland Security, and they’re NOT the bad guys…The US government is NOT that bad guy bully that everyone seems to think. they’re performing a job as best they can. Law enforcement aren’t the bad guys. If i was a fed, and i saw a citizen doing what your husband is doing… he may have every right to code his encryption as he see’s fit, but i’d personally keep turning the screw tighter and tighter a turn at a time until he offered the key. Trust me, the government isn’t getting upset, the goal is to make your husband paranoid until it gets to the point they AND his family are pressuring him for the crack. It’ heck of a lot cheaper for a few suits to turn the screw than fund and assign a code team to decipher.

If the method he developed does in fact violate US law. then he does have an obligation to live within the law. The US Goverment isn’t a monster. they’re just doing their job.\
 
get a good lawyer who can help you protect your interests and those of your children and protect you from the legal and tax mess your husband is embroiling you in. do it first thing Monday.
 
Exalt said:
100% Agreed. This is top news, in my opinion, right next to:

news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061014/ap_on_hi_te/myspace_bush_threat

And

progressive.org/mag_rcb092106

I just hope these aren’t signs pointing to a new and terrible 1984-esque America.
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There is a difference in saying “kill the president” and “the president is an idiot”…one is threat on his life and the other is not…one will get you questioned and perhaps arrested the other will not…unless you live an era when Bush is in power:eek:
 
thechrismyster said:
Get a lawyer if this keeps up. what can you do about the harrassement? not much. it is what it is. they’re using means at their disposal with the hopes that it will get to a point the payoff for keeping the decryption quiet isn’t worth the hassle anymore for you or your family…

If i was a fed, and i saw a citizen doing what your husband is doing… he may have every right to code his encryption as he see’s fit, but i’d personally keep turning the screw tighter and tighter a turn at a time until he offered the key.
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Obviously, you do not know many Federal judges. If the Federal agents display harrassing behavior, a Federal Court can and will issue a restraining order. If a Federal agent that violates this, a Federal Judge will order US Marshals to arrest them so fast it will make your head spin. Federal judges have little tolerance for disregard of their orders, especially by law enforcement. They didnt get appointed there by being nice.
thechrismyster said:
If i was a fed, and i saw a citizen doing what your husband is doing… he may have every right to code his encryption as he see’s fit, but i’d personally keep turning the screw tighter and tighter a turn at a time until he offered the key.
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See above. There is only so much an Agent can do before they start infringing on the very thing they are sworn to uphold.

There are many types of encryption. There is bit-shifting, XOR methods, text compression, RSA, SHA-1. The trick here is that these require a “key” or cipher to decrypt. Most supercomputers can weed out this pretty fast (days or weeks).

Then there is encryption that crypts the text based on a formula caluculated from the “key”, and then compresses the crypted text using another cipher routine (like WinZip does). Decrypting requires knowing the key, and then knowing how to find the formula inside, and then knowing the decompression routine. This is the method that the Feds are deathly afraid of.

This is how terrorists and drug organizations are communicating through stenography. It has the Feds so nervous that the Net Neutrality bills being proposed are actually being considered on the basis of “National Security”.
 
You husband sounds mentally unbalanced. Someone who acts this provocatively and is this belligerant with authorities after being made aware of the serious potential consequences is not acting rationally. He is in need of professional intervention before he destroys you both financially and/or lands himself in jail. This is not a time to find yourself baiting the government on issues impinging on national security.
 
Coming from a country that doesn’t have freedom of speech or expressions and having a government that doesn’t care much for its citiziens, I can support what the US government is doing. I actually feel safe that they are working for my interests and keeping this country safe. I see these surveilance as not something that impedes on my privacy but as a protective measure… after 9/11, it seems to me that these work are very important to protecting people here. Unless I have something to hide, I wouldn’t have much worries that they are looking through what I’ve sent. This is just my opinion but I have to say I feel protected and safe and have a voice here thanks to our government… and I would do my best to make sure everyone here has it too.

While reading your post, I was thinking, had the government came and ask nicely and explained the situation, your husband might just give them what they needed. Your husband sees it as a demand and that may irks him… maybe you can ask your husband and discuss this with him. Would he handle it differently if the government approach in a different way? First impression is everything, maybe the government agent had a bad day or has an abusive behavior when he wrote your husband.

Warmest regards,
Ben
 
Even if what he did is legal, does that make it right? Are you sure he is telling you ALL of the details? If he (and the people here that support his right to do whatever) are so sure that he can do this, then why is he destroying information and doing other things like that? If he is not breaking the law, he’ll be OK in the long run, but it sounds like there is more to the story.

Also, I feel bad for you, but as an American, if somebody goes out of their way to assist somebody in harming this country, even if it is to prove a point, I have no problem holding that person accountable for any action that results from it.

If the people overseas are bad guys, anybody helping them should be held responsible. I have grandkids to enjoy in the future, and helping those that want to harm them is wrong.

Also, a security clearance is a judgement call. Of course the gov’t can revoke it if they feel the person is suspicious. It happens all the time and I have seen them revoked for a lot less than this in the 22 years that I have had one.

I would not ever consider granting it back to somebody that had that much animosity against the gov’t. It is for those the gov’t trusts to act in their interests, not the individual’s.

I will pray tonight for you and your family.
 
readsalot said:
If he is not breaking the law, he’ll be OK in the long run, but it sounds like there is more to the story.
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Riiiiiight. There are many, many, many people in prison, or who have been in prison because the government felt like it. Anyone can be arrested for anything, at any time. Only a court can then free them at that point, if law enforcement chooses not to. You cannot trust law enforcement in that manner.
…then why is he destroying information and doing other things like that?
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If you read her other posts, it appears the guy watches and looks at pornography. If you haven’t heard, Florida Sherrifs are now trying to enforce local obscenity laws, meaning if the Feds seized his computer, they could hand it to a Sherriff, who could then charge him with misdemeanor fines if the cached internet files are obscene enough. Do you want the Feds crawling around your hard drive looking for anything and everything? I would smash mine, and dump it in a bucket of magnets before id let the Feds have unadulterated access.

Also, he may be trying to backup his source code, and keep it off his hard drive so the Feds cant get at it. he might want to sell it to banks or companies, after which it is protected by Trade Secrets.

think about it. 2048 bits or higher encryption (thats the higherst i can find as of now). virtually uncrackable. credit card companies now use AT MOST, 256 bit. which is why we now have millions of identity thefts a year. the reason? once you hand your SSA keys to the Feds (from a bank, company ect), you are virtually guaranteed it will be leaked.

Im not saying that he should hand this to the Mujahadeen, but the potential for greater personal security far outweights some extremist deciding to use whatever this is. He could try to negotiate a phat deal with the Feds, and sell it to them and get rich. thats what i would do, and move to some tropical island far away from the US and any cold weather. who knows WHY he is doing what he is doing. probably only him.
 
Liberian said:
Seminole Girl,

You certainly have my sympathy and my prayers. I know a bit about the subject of cryptography and, while I do not care to minimize your husband’s achievement, there are publicly available systems that can make codes that would take supercomputers thousands of years to decode. Without your husband’s program, the criminals and terrorists would just find something else to use. The subject of public-key cryptography is over a decade old.

I also know a little bit about computer geeks (being something of one myself) and for one thing I think your husband needs to sit down and make a decision as to whether he wants to spend the rest of his life as an American or as a citizen of another country. I can appreciate his distrust of the United States government, but frankly I don’t think there is another country in the world with a better government–and that will allow him to become a citizen. (I understand that most of Monte Carlo, for example, is under 24-hour camera surveillance.)

The bad language in the letter to the government and the erasing of his computer disks sounds more serious, though. It may be that your husband is showing signs of paranoia and would thus need professional help. I read a description once of computer programmers as “independent to the point of a mild paranoia” and I find this to be true in the people in the field that I have seen–including myself a couple of decades ago. It’s not rare.
  • Liberian
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Librerian:

Thank you for some common sense. I think Seminole Girl’s husband may be one of these who has decided that the Jihadis who flew the planes into the buildings on 9/11/2001 and who’ve done numerous atrocities around the world are minor nuisances and that the real enemies are George Bush and his “Cabal”.

A little reading of what the Jihadis have written, said and done should be sufficient to demonstrate that, as much as some may disagree with the Bush Administration, the real enemies of civilization are the Jihadis who have already slaughtered the innocent in mind boggling numbers, and are preparing to slaughter the innocent in numbers that will make what they’ve done so far look like a “warm-up”.

If this Decription program is as good as her husband and his friend have said it is, I most definitely don’t want it falling into their hands, Esp. after what I’ve heard about the different ways people can encrypt and compress information.

This really should not be a forum for discussing the legitimacy of the Bush Administration when someone seems perfectly willing to give technology to terrorists that would allow them to more easily circumvent the measures our government has put in place to protect us from them.

I posted elsewhere that North Korea is having extreme difficulties and that Kim Jong Il is very likely to sell the 6-8 nuclear bombs his scientists have made to the highest bidder as soon as things really deteriorate. Highest bidders include Iran (which only has one centrifuge) and Osama Bin Ladin (who has hundreds of millions of dollars).

It doesn’t take much imagination to realize which countries have been targetted if one of those gets the bombs…

And, anyone willing to starve 2 million of his own people to death also would have no problems watching them all die if he could hit a couple of American cities with nuclear bombs.

Sophisticated encryption technology only makes situations such as the above more dangerous.

Your Brother in Christ, Michael
 
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