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Actually, neither hooks nor encryption are unexportable, you just need a license to export them. ...
I hope I'm not alone in wondering why on earth this is the case.
They don't want to encourage encryption if they can avoid it. It impairs their ability to gather intelligence.
Ok, exporting cryptography from the USA is restricted, and highly controversial. I think there has been something on this one already.
But what is it, in the legal wibble, that make _hooks_ to cryptography restricted. How have they worded things to make this the case.
Legal? What makes you think so? It hasn't made it to the courts yet because people in the US aren't willing to risk jail for over their right to do it. The only court case I am aware of was the RSA case and in that one, the courts ruled against the NSA - but in today's political and economic environment, people who do cryptography don't want to risk it.
The hooks are of course completely useless in and of themselves. You can only do anything useful with them if you have the matching crypto package.
Not really right. It's very easy to change a compression hook into an encryption hook using standard off-the-shelf shareware, public domain software, or commercial products.
Yours a confused Brit ... who doesn't have this problem ... yet!!
Don't bet on it. If you really try to export top-flight encryption technology in a big way, you may find that your government can be just as opressive as mine. -- -> See: Info-Sec Heaven using our New Super Secure World-Wide-Web Server -> Free: Test your system's security (scans deeper than SATAN or ISS!) ---------------------- both at URL: http://all.net ---------------------- -> Read: "Protection and Security on the Information Superhighway" John Wiley and Sons, 1995 ISBN 0-471-11389-1, 320 pp, $24.95 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Management Analytics - 216-686-0090 - PO Box 1480, Hudson, OH 44236