There have been various rumours and comments over the past few years that the use of crypto in certain countries (Syria, Iraq, possibly China) is very dangerous for the end user, but very little actual evidence to substantiate this. About a week ago I got some evidence (well, something better than the usual rumours) on the situation with using crypto in Iraq which people might find interesting. I was talking to someone who worked for a large multinational corporation which maintains a comprehensive directory of who to contact in each country they operate in (basically every country on earth, this was before the gulf war so Iraq was included) for any kind of emergency. This consists of a huge file of data intended to cover every imaginable type of situation. Included in the information on Iraq was a comment to the effect that you should never, ever use any form of encryption when sending messages to the contact people there. He can't remember the exact details any more, but the implication was that any encrypted messages sent to them would result in them quietly disappearing. Since this was a very big company with a lot of sensitive information which it would go to great lengths to protect, I would assume they had very good reasons for advising against the use of crypto in this instance. Peter.