> There's really no point in restricting length or non-alphanumeric characters.
I agree, the only rationale I can think of for this is that these institutions don't want people to forget their passwords, but even then I don't understand why they would want that at the expense of security.
The irritating thing is that forbidding spaces discourages pass phrases. You can't use "the cat sat on my blue suede shoes", which is pretty secure yet easy to remember.
You could use "thecatsatonmybluesuedeshoes", but that may be harder to type accurately.
I agree, the only rationale I can think of for this is that these institutions don't want people to forget their passwords, but even then I don't understand why they would want that at the expense of security.