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Comment by hadoukenio | Hacker News Reader

"A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."

  - Second Amendment to the United States Constitution

As US law classifies cryptography as a munition, isn't it every US citizens right to use encryption?

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ARMs.

Arms is short for armament.

Armament = Weapon.

The Department of Justice classified cryptography as a munition.

Munition = Weapon.

In law, it's always about the technicalities, down to the definition of words. Prove me wrong.

I'm not disagreeing with you, just pointing out that if crypto is ammunition, then the actual weapon is the computer. So this could be read as the amendment forbidding the government from taking away your computers.

It would be a fabulous interpretation, although I'm somehow skeptical that we'll ever find a court endorsing it.

I think you're getting armament, munition and ammunition confused. The US Justice Department classifies cryptography as a "munition" (aka a weapon), not "ammunition" (used by a weapon).

"Munition" is originally a word for "fortification", and was then expanded to mean "weapon" or "ammunition" interchangeably. It's a generic term, so you can interpret it both ways.

I could be wrong, but I think "ARMs" was intended as a pun referring to the ARM cpus that are commonly used in mobile devices.

It's just a well-placed pun. Apple's mobile phones use ARM-based processors.

https://www.google.com/search?q=arm+processor+apple

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