I recently received this press release from the Software Publishers Association. It gets better as it goes on. --Phil Mulivor mulivor@orion.crc.monroecc.edu -------------------------------------------------------------------- 06/04 1018 SPA RENEWS CALL FOR LIBERALIZING EXPORT CONTROLS WASHINGTON (JUNE 4) IDG PR SERVICE - At a National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) hearing Thursday on national cryptographic policies, the Software Publishers Association (SPA) explained how continued "munitions" export controls of mass market software with encryption capabilities were seriously harming the American software industry and renewed its call for significant export liberalization of mass market software using DES or other encryption algorithms such as RC2/RC4 at comparable strengths. SPA also warned that the Administration's recent announcement of its "Clipper Chip" initiative did not address the software industry's concerns and should not be an excuse to delay export liberalization. The SPA announced the preliminary results of its recent research which reveal a robust and rapidly expanding foreign market in encryption programs and products. "Unilateral US export controls do not make any sense given the widespread legal availability of foreign encryption programs," testified Ilene Rosenthal, SPA's general counsel. "Foreign companies will buy foreign encryption products if they cannot buy from American companies and in turn become ex-US customers. As a result, the U.S. Government will only succeed in crippling an American industry's exporting ability." The SPA research team preliminary concluded that: - The US no longer dominates the encryption field. In fact, the SPA has identified to date more foreign than domestic encryption programs and products (143 vs. 133). - There clearly are many foreign options for strong encryption, contrary to assertions by the U.S. government. SPA has preliminarily identified to date 80 foreign software, hardware, and combination hardware/software products for text, data, and file encryption from companies in 13 foreign countries. Forty-eight of these employ DES, which is nearly impossible to export from the U.S. in other than very rare circumstances. Sixty-three additional foreign encryption programs and products have been identified (including those from an additional five countries) but have yet to be investigated. However, SPA believes many of these also will be found to employ DES or other comparable strength encryption algorithms. - Fifteen foreign mass market encryption software programs and kits are available that employ the DES algorithm. These are published by companies in Germany, Israel, the United Kingdom, Denmark, Canada, Belgium, and Australia. These software programs are installed by the user inserting a diskette; the kits enable encryption capabilities to be easily programmed into a variety of applications. - Foreign companies increasingly recognize and are responding to the need to provide software only encryption solutions. Although the foreign encryption market is still heavily weighted towards encryption hardware and hardware/software combinations, the market trend is going to software. The SPA noted that in addition to these commercially available programs and products, any analysis of the availability of foreign encryption alternatives must consider programs available on the Internet, which is the largest global network connecting millions of users throughout the world. - DES is widely available on the Internet, including implementations that can be simply down-loaded and used. - A recently popularized encryption program entitled Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) also is widely available throughout the world. PGP implements the International Data Encryption Algorithm (IDEA), which provides protection comparable to DES. The program is intended for electronic mail, but also is ideal for encrypting files. It is available for free, may be used legally throughout Europe, whether in a business or at home, comes with easy-to-read instructions, is trivial to install, and simple to use. "Some government officials routinely assert that even if the Government prohibits America's software publishers from offering encryption features demanded by their customers abroad, we should not be concerned because there are foreign programs and products available," said Ken Wasch, SPA's executive director. "Our reseach shows that such an assertion is erroneous. In fact, there are a very large number of such programs and products available on the market today. The result is lost sales for American business without any improvement in national security." The Software Publishers Association is the principal trade association of the PC software industry. Its more than 1000 members represent the leading publishers in the business, consumer, and education markets. The SPA has offices in Washington and Paris, France. CONTACT: Software Publishers Association, Washington Terri Childs, 202/452-1600