John Young wrote to Alan Olsen:
I am going to try very hard to be there. It claims that statements will be taken on the EAR. Anyone want to help write a statement to be read to the commitee?
An excellent start would be Adam Shostack's questioning of the legal authority for the feds to restrict publishing. See his Tom Paine taunt in Peter Wayner's NYT report yesterday, and as posted here.
Declaring yourself to be a cpunk, well, can you get a hearing at a hearing of closed EARs any better way?
There's a small mountain of info available on the EAR, Wassenaar, and the unfolding crypto regs, providing anyone wants to consult it. Michael Foomkin has reviewed the legal gounds for continuing the "national emergency" undergirding the repeatedly extended period for not legislating up-to-date export regulations. To put off the fight to pass a new law, every August, as done a few days ago (http://jya.com/eo081997.txt), the presiding president issues an executive order under the International Emergency Economic Power Act (IEEPA) extending the national emergency initially declared during what appeared to be a genuine national threat decades ago. It is these series of orders that legalize the EARs, and a lot more, so I read, beyond our decryption of the state/mil/com multi-level DMS. See Michael's site for more on IEEPA and much more A-1 crypto-legal stuff at: http://www.law.miami.edu/~froomkin/froomkin.html We've documented some of the more recent EAR shenanigans on our site at: http://jya.com/eartoc.htm Similarly, background and foreground on the status of BXA implementation of the Wassenaar Arrangement, to be discussed at the Portland meet, is available on Greg Broiles site at: http://www.parrhesia.com And at our site at: http://jya.com/wa/watoc.htm BXA has written me that the bureau expects to issue regulations implementing Wassenaar "this summer," international-oriented regs which will cover the full spectrum of dual-use and militarily critical technologies.The current draft CCL regs circulating for domestic applications seems to part of an orchestrated campaign to address all export issues -- domestic and international -- at once, using one to leverage the other. Something similar appears to be taking place worldwide. See Bert-Jaap Koop's ever-changing survey of world crypto law at: http://cwis.kub.nl/~frw/people/koops/jenc8bjk.htm Even so, it'll be hard to wade through all this e-paper pile before the meet, and probably would not be effective anyway, for the meet's sponsors know all that and couldn't give a shit. A heavy-metal instrument is needed to turn their attention away from impenetrable legal and military and NDA-commercial protection. Now we turn the target-finder over to Mr. Tim May and those anonymees worldwide who wish to ... lock and load, wait, not guns, even more powerful munitions to penetrate through thick skulls who are convinced they're the smartest bastards on earth with the biggest CPUs run by tiniest algos to prove it.