''Bernstein v. United States'' is a set of court cases brought by Daniel J. Bernstein challenging restrictions on the

export of cryptography from the United States The export of cryptography from the United States to other countries has experienced various levels of restrictions over time. World War II illustrated that code-breaking and cryptography can play an integral part in national security and the a ...

History

The case was first brought in 1995, when Bernstein was a student at

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant un ...

, and wanted to publish a paper and associated

source code In computing, source code, or simply code, is any collection of code, with or without comments, written using a human-readable programming language, usually as plain text. The source code of a program is specially designed to facilitate the ...

on his ''Snuffle'' encryption system. Bernstein was represented by the

Electronic Frontier Foundation The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is an international non-profit digital rights group based in San Francisco, California. The foundation was formed on 10 July 1990 by John Gilmore, John Perry Barlow and Mitch Kapor to promote Internet ...

, who hired outside lawyer

Cindy Cohn Cindy Cohn is an American civil liberties attorney specializing in Internet law. She represented Daniel J. Bernstein and the Electronic Frontier Foundation in ''Bernstein v. United States''. Education She received her undergraduate degree ...

and also obtained ''

pro bono publico ( en, 'for the public good'), usually shortened to , is a Latin phrase for professional work undertaken voluntarily and without payment. In the United States, the term typically refers to provision of legal services by legal professionals for pe ...

'' assistance from Lee Tien of Berkeley; M. Edward Ross of the San Francisco law firm of Steefel, Levitt & Weiss; James Wheaton and Elizabeth Pritzker of the First Amendment Project in Oakland; and Robert Corn-Revere, Julia Kogan, and Jeremy Miller of the Washington, DC, law firm of Hogan & Hartson. After four years and one regulatory change, the

Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit (in case citations, 9th Cir.) is the U.S. federal court of appeals that has appellate jurisdiction over the U.S. district courts in the following federal judicial districts: * District ...

ruled that

software Software is a set of computer programs and associated documentation and data. This is in contrast to hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work. At the lowest programming level, executable code consist ...

was speech protected by the

First Amendment First or 1st is the ordinal form of the number one (#1). First or 1st may also refer to: *World record, specifically the first instance of a particular achievement Arts and media Music * 1$T, American rapper, singer-songwriter, DJ, and reco ...

and that the government's regulations preventing its publication were unconstitutional. Regarding those regulations, the EFF states: The government requested ''

en banc In law, an en banc session (; French for "in bench"; also known as ''in banc'', ''in banco'' or ''in bank'') is a session in which a case is heard before all the judges of a court (before the entire bench) rather than by one judge or a smaller p ...

'' review. In ''Bernstein v. U.S. Dept. of Justice'', 192 F.3d 1308 (9th Cir. 1999), the Ninth Circuit ordered that this case be reheard by the ''en banc'' court, and withdrew the three-judge panel opinion, ''Bernstein v. U.S. Dept. of Justice'', 176 F.3d 1132 (9th Cir. 1999). The government modified the regulations again, substantially loosening them, and Bernstein, now a professor at the

University of Illinois at Chicago The University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) is a public research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its campus is in the Near West Side community area, adjacent to the Chicago Loop. The second campus established under the University of Illinois ...

, challenged them again. This time, he chose to represent himself, although he had no formal legal training. On October 15, 2003, almost nine years after Bernstein first brought the case, the judge dismissed it and asked Bernstein to come back when the government made a "concrete threat".

Recent

Apple cited ''Bernstein v. US'' in its refusal to hack the San Bernardino shooter's iPhone, saying that they could not be compelled to "speak" (write code).

References

External links

Bernstein v. United States

EFF Archive of the Cases

{{DEFAULTSORT:Bernstein V. United States Cryptography law United States Internet case law Electronic Frontier Foundation litigation 1996 in United States case law 1997 in United States case law United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit cases United States District Court for the Northern District of California cases

History

Recent

See also

References

External links