On Fri, 4 Dec 1998, Tim May wrote:
On another topic, what of the "free export of crypto" nations? Some nations, or folks in some nations, like to talk about how they are actually "more free" than Americans are because they can export strong crypto. Canada comes to mind, as there are a couple of companies we know about using the ostensibly weaker Canadian export controls.
(I maintain, and Lucky can be my witness that I expressed this forcefully to some Canadian entrepreneurs very recently, that Canada's relative laxness on crypto arises first, from their ignorance of the issues and second, from the fact that Washington hasn't yet told them how high to jump. I have long believed the U.S. would issue the orders and other countries would turn out to be just as restrictive, if not more restrictive, as they have fewer in-country protections against restrictions on strong crypto. If Canada, Finland, etc. tighten up, can Anguilla be far behind?)
I believe that there will be free havens for crypto for some time to come. Crypto is too obscure a topic to be outlawed worldwide anytime soon. So the Canadian entrepreneurs Tim is referring to and others determined to ship crypto will be able to do so for many, many years by simply relocating development to other countries. Just as there are small countries that don't play ball with FINCEN, there will be small countries that don't play ball with crypto regs and be that because that's the countries only significant source of hard cash. -- Lucky Green <shamrock@cypherpunks.to> PGP v5 encrypted email preferred.