At 10:45 AM 2/3/97 -0500, tmcghan@gill-simpson.com wrote:
But under a controversial new Clinton administration policy that took effect Jan. 1, companies may receive permission to export stronger programs.
"I'm happy that we've been able to do this within the first month without rancor or difficulty," Under Secretary of Commerce for Export Administration William Reinsch told Reuters in a telephone interview.
To export stronger programs immediately, companies must agree to incorporate features within two years allowing the government to decode encrypted messages by recovering the software keys, however.
This ought to be challengeable. (equal-protection violation?) And while the government's actions are normally phrased in this way, another way to describe them is to argue that the government is: 1. Wanting a product or service to be developed. 2. Wants private companies to do this. 3. Wants to do so without Congress appropriating the money. (And they're doing it by, in effect, "paying" for it by allowing certain companies to export freely, with the requirement that the company does the work "gratis".) 4. Wants to do so without any sort of competitive bidding process. (The terms of the contract have not gone through any of the normal procedures.) I assume there are laws and/or rules which prohibit exactly this kind of behavior. Would it be possible to file a lawsuit, and then file for an injunction to prevent this de-facto deal from going through? Might this constitute an anti-trust violation, because multiple companies are acting in concert to restrict access to the foreign crypto market by agreeing to develop ONLY A CERTAIN KIND OF ENCRYPTION, namely GAKked encryption? Jim Bell jimbell@pacifier.com