On Fri, 13 Mar 1998, Anonymous wrote:
toiling in the bowels of Netscape. An amazing feat, achieving world-wide distribution of millions of copies of strong crypto, the Feds all unknowing.
Netscape distributes both a domestic version and an international version: "Note to customers from countries other than Canada and the United States: Netscape's recent agreement with the U.S. government allows you to download Netscape Communicator client software with strong encryption capabilities that can be accessed only when you connect to particular Netscape servers approved for export. This capability is now built into all Netscape Communicator client products and does NOT require you to fill out an eligibility declaration. U.S. and Canadian citizens and permanent residents may download versions with strong encryption that is ALWAYS enabled (regardless of the 128-bit server connected to) but must still fill out an eligibility declaration before doing so. This option allows you to talk to sites that use a strong version of cryptography to encode sensitive information - such as a credit card number - that you don't want anyone to be able to capture and read as it is transmitted over the Internet. All Netscape products include cryptographic capability. However, if you are a U.S. or Canadian citizen or a legal permanent resident of the United States, you can choose a version with the stronger encryption always enabled. Strong encryption refers to the size of the key used to encrypt the message. Roughly speaking, messages encrypted with strong (128-bit) encryption are 309,485,009,821,345,068,724,781,056 times harder to break than those that use 40-bit encryption. However, some experts estimate that keys much shorter than 128 bits will be safe for the next two decades. The strong U.S./Canada-only encryption version is available in French and English to U.S. and Canadian citizens and to permanent residents of the United States only. Because the U.S. government restricts export of any product using 128-bit encryption, you will be asked to fill out an Eligibility Declaration stating that you are a U.S. or Canadian citizen or a legal permanent resident of the United States before you will be allowed to download the software you've selected. The Eligibility Declaration will be stored in a database and made available to the U.S. government upon request." -- http://home.netscape.com/download/client_options.html#enhanced -- Andrew Fabbro [afabbro@umich.edu] [andrewf@jesuswept.com] http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afabbro/ 313.647.2713 "We make money the old fashion way. We print it." - DigiCrime