February 1, 1995 Dear David, We received your response to our membership renewal reminder and would like to thank you for taking the time to actually write a letter explaining why you have chosen not to renew. We are sorry that you are unhappy with the role EFF played in the Digital Telephony negotiations. We were not totally comfortable our role, but we do believe we did the right thing and that there would be a much more intrusive bill if EFF had done nothing. However, I'm sure that you've heard the arguments by now, and I'm not writing to change your mind about our role in Digital Telephony but, instead, to let you know about a lawsuit we're about to file against the State Department and others claiming the ITAR listing of encryption as a munition is unconstitutional. Our plaintiff wanted to post an encryption algorithm he developed to sci.crypt. The State Department informed him that he would need an export license before he could post the algorithm on the Net and then told him that he would be denied the license because the algorithm was too strong. We see this as a critical First Amendment challenge to a regulation that undermines secure communications on the networks. The suit should be filed before the end of the month. We don't expect to please all of the people all of the time, and it is clear that we didn't please you with Digital Telephony. But we really are trying to make Cyberspace a better place to be, and we hope you'll reconsider your decision regarding your renewal. You can earmark your contribution to be applied only to litigation or some other particular function, if that would make you feel more comfortable. Take care. Sincerely, Shari ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Shari Steele, Director of Legal Services ssteele@eff.org Electronic Frontier Foundation 202/861-7700 (voice) 1667 K Street, N.W., Suite 801 202/861-1258 (fax) Washington, DC 20006-1605 202/861-1224 (BBS)