Question
Note to players: The answer to this tossup is pretty general. Computer law professor Peter Junger was prevented from admitting foreign students to a course due to his use of this technology, leading him to successfully sue the US government. The court case Bernstein v. US, brought by Daniel J. Bernstein, resulted in an example of this technology being considered free speech. This technology is why early browsers like Netscape needed to have separate international and domestic versions, with the latter being much more difficult to obtain. Phil Zimmermann was put under criminal investigation and accused of illegally (*) exporting weapons because he freely released an example of this technology named for being “pretty good”. The NSA placed a backdoor in the Dual_EC_DRBG algorithm, which generates random numbers for use by this technology. For 10 points, name this technology, public-key examples of which include Diffie-Hellman and RSA. ■END■
ANSWER: cryptography [accept cryptosystems or ciphers or encodings; accept encryption or equivalent; accept specific types of cryptography like public-key cryptography; anti-prompt on “SSL”, “RSA”, or “PGP”; prompt on “software”, “computer code”, “algorithms”, or equivalent; prompt on “crypto” because that unfortunately has two meanings; prompt on “security” or “privacy software” with “what general kind of technology provides the security/privacy?”] (The US prohibited exporting encryption with more than a 40-bit key, so many programs like internet browsers needed to be made intentionally insecure for their global release.)
<AW>
= Average correct buzz position
| Conv. % | Power % | Average Buzz |
|---|
| 100% | 40% | 89.60 |
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