Peter D. Junger--Case Western Reserve University Law School--said:
There is a United States Munitions List for imports that is administered by the Treasury Department, but cryptographic devices and software are not included on that list.
I agree with Peter. I looked this up at one point. The government has considered trying to impose import controls on crypto, like they've considered every other option they could think of. The question is what it would buy them except more trouble from the public. NSA can't sustain a claim that it would help them, since they aren't supposed to be spying on Americans anyway. But in Clipper-II, NSA risks effective export controls to advance FBI wiretapping interests. Now that NSA is in fully naked in bed with the FBI, they could jointly claim some governmental interest in killing off domestic privacy. But that's what would land them in trouble with the public. I really think they would have done better to have just shut up about crypto and not pushed the issue. The more they tighten the screws, the more agitated and educated the public gets. For every Clipper chip that has sold to a non-governmental party, ten Cypherpunks or 'punk sympathyzers have risen up and started writing code, investigating, talking to their friends, publishing articles in the press, and filing lawsuits. Ten years ago it was pretty lonely to be a cryptographer. Most of us wouldn't be on this mailing list -- the list itself would probably not exist -- if the government had just quietly let the export criteria advance, year after year, and had let the quaint academics play with their toys. But they tried alternating between stonewalling us and forcing crap down our throats. The result has been that the public now *cares* about crypto policy. And the public will get what it wants, in the long run, no matter what the impact on the privileges of the current crop of bureaucrats. John