Crypto prof asked to remove NSA-related blog post

[InfoSec News <alerts () infosecnews org>]

http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/09/crypto-prof-asked-to-remove-nsa-related-blog-post/

By Nate Anderson
Ars Technica
Sept 9 2013

Matthew Green is a well-known cryptography professor, currently teaching 
in the computer science department of Johns Hopkins University in 
Baltimore. Last week, Green authored a long and interesting blog post 
about the recent revelations that the National Security Agency (NSA) has, 
among much else, subverted crypto standards. In his words, "The TL;DR 
['too long; didn't read' version] is that the NSA has been doing some very 
bad things." And Green went on to speculate at some length about what 
those "bad things" were and what they might mean.

Today, Green's academic dean contacted him to ask that "all copies" of the 
blog post be removed from university servers. Green said that the move was 
not "my Dean's fault," but he did not elaborate. Were cryptology 
professors at Johns Hopkins not allowed to say, as Green had, things like:

  I was totally unprepared for today's bombshell revelations describing
  the NSA's efforts to defeat encryption. Not only does the worst possible
  hypothetical I discussed appear to be true, but it's true on a scale I
  couldn't even imagine. I'm no longer the crank. I wasn't even close to
  cranky enough.

Was basic academic freedom on the line? Had the request even come 
initially from Johns Hopkins or from outside the school—perhaps someone at 
the NSA headquarters just up the road from Baltimore?

[...]

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