Timothy C. May writes: : At 1:03 AM 11/5/95, Simon Spero wrote: : >And here we have the rub. People with permanent residency (i.e. green : >cards) are fully entitled to access to strong crypto. Most foreign : >students are on J-1 visas, which do not grant permanent residency. : : Irrelevant. : : J-1 persons are still accorded the basic rights of citizens, save for a few : things like voting, holding certain offices, and perhaps jury duty (not : sure about this, as my recent jury summons was apparently based on my : Calif. Driver's License and required no form of identification whatsoever). It is however a violation of the ITAR to disclose cryptographic software (including algorithms) to students ona a J-1 visa, but not to someone who has a green card. : Saying "People with permanent residency (i.e. green cards) are fully : entitled to access to strong crypto." and--presumably--implying that J-1 : visa holders are _not_ entitled to use strong crypto within the U.S. (or, : for that matter, in their own countries, but this is another issue), is : misleading. It is--if the ITAR is constitutional--a serious felony to give J-1 visa holders access to strong--and to weak--crypto, but no one has implied that they are not entitled to use it. Nothing in the law of the United States says that foreign persons can't get crypto, it is just a felony to disclose it to them (within or without the United States). : The laws about "showing a foreign national" certain items do not : differentiate, so far as I have seen, between various kinds of visas. The ITAR distinguishes between foreign persons, who are not U.S. persons, and U.S. persons who are either United States citizens or have a visa admitting them to permanent residency in the United States. The crime at issue is disclosing cryptographic software to foreign persons. And whether one is a foreign person does depend on what type of visa one has (if one is not a U.S. citizen). -- Peter D. Junger--Case Western Reserve University Law School--Cleveland, OH Internet: junger@pdj2-ra.f-remote.cwru.edu junger@samsara.law.cwru.edu