Matt writes:

[Steve writes:]

...

they may throw in charges of importing IDEA, though I doubt that they'd indict just on those grounds; in an era of key escrow, they'd certainly like a court to rule they had the power to exclude subversive foreign crypto....

Assuming that whoevever implemented PGP did not himself import the cipher, but based the implementation on the EUROCRYPT '90 paper that was 'imported' by Springer-Verlag, I don't understand what the basis would be for such a charge. Now an indictment against Springer for shipping the proceedings (which contained C source code for IDEA) into the US - that would be interesting...

If memory serves me correctly, Phil's original PGP offered DES and bass-o-matic, and the IDEA encryption was implemented in the Europeans PGP2.0 version (though I don't know if it was done by Phil or by Europeans, I think the latter.) This means that the IDEA implementation was imported by person or persons unknown, presumably including Phil and many others. During one round of Sternlight Wars, I proposed doing a U.S. implementation, but John Gilmore convinced me that importing software is legal under the then-existing ITAR wording. This could be an opportunity to test it in court. Bill