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Didn't the ANSI financial committee just adopt 3DES (over NSA objections)? Presumably they consider the export situation solved/solvable.

There is the trivial solution of buying outside the US. The hardware is actually better these days as the Germans and others have a worldwide market and the economies that brings.

Also. the ITAR rules give banks and financial institutions Extra Slack for exporting crypto gear for their own use. In some ways that makes sense (electronic bank robbery could be a very profitable business, and bankers are politically influential), and yet some of the government's biggest objections to free crypto seems to be that it allows people to have financial privacy... #--- # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, Freelance Information Architect, stewarts@ix.netcom.com # Phone +1-510-247-0664 Pager/Voicemail 1-408-787-1281 #--- # Crypto in 3-4 lines of perl --> http://dcs.ex.ac.uk/~aba/