EFF's Legal Director Cindy Cohn recounts the story of how she came to work at EFF, beginning with a pro-bono case that legalized strong crypto in America:
"A doctoral student in mathematics named Dan Bernstein has been told by the government that if he publishes a computer program he wrote on the Internet he could go to jail as an arms dealer."
"What does the computer program do, John?" I responded. "Does it blow things up? Take planes out of the sky? Reveal the location of warships at sea?"
"No, it just lets you keep messages secret. It's an encryption program. Without it, your email messages are just like a postcard, open for anyone to read," he replied.
"Sounds like a First Amendment problem to me," I said, despite not knowing what encryption was, or ever having sent an email message.
"Me too. Want to take the case with EFF?"
