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Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

Comes from an understanding of how service providers actually get gagged: the courts actively issue a gag rule based on orders they themselves issued. That's can't be true of basic science.

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What if the powers that be decide to "classify" the results/reports? I would guess that would be a big legal hurdle. But if things get to that point, a copy the report would probably show up on wikileaks... I guess?

That's not how classification works.

It's also not how research works. For something to be restrained from publication, the government needs to know it exists. But with new research results, they can't know what to restrain until it's too late.

They could try passing a law outlawing security research, but: good luck with that.

Don't they now know what to restrain? (due to this post, at the very least...)

Well if they planted a backdoor, they can know it exists, and could restrain it before it is too late.

It's not normally how classification works, but then there's the Born Secret doctrine that was (is?) applied to information about nuclear weapons:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Born_secret

The NSA isn't going to swoop in and claim that the results of the Truecrypt audit were born secret. But the answer to nabla9's question is yes, legal precedent exists in the United States for restraining the publication of original research when it is perceived to damage vital national security interests.

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