At 3:49 PM 9/20/95, Ian Goldberg wrote:

So, Dave and I got free munitions shirts (they're different, though; the font is smaller and they have a bunch of X'd out Constitutional Amendments on the back; I think they ere designed by Joel Furr) for our bug find.

So I'm wearing it today. The thing is, I live in International House, a residence that has 50% non-Americans.

So, any consensus as to whether it's actually illegal to do so? I remember some disagreement a few weeks ago that AFAIK wasn't resolved.

The _consensus_ here seems to be: "This t-shirt is illegal to wear in front of non-Americans," judging by the comments here. The _reality_ is quite different, I think, and the "this shirt is illegal" hype is, in my opinion, just that, hyperbole. Even hyperbull, too. Books and written articles containing crypto algorithms are _not_ illegal for "furriners" to look at. The t-shirt contains at most a fuzzy printing of an algorithm that has been widely printed in various books and in articles in mailing lists like ours. (I agree that there are some unresolved issues with ostensibly machine-readable forms. The t-shirt is not machine-readable by any plausible interpretation of machine-readable.)

As far as I can tell, it's _technically_ illegal, but any LEO would be out of his mind to try to enforce it (it would have to be a Fed, too, wouldn't it? Or can regular city cops get you for violating export restrictions?).

Ian did great work on the latest Netscape break, but this is just plain crazy. --Tim May ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay@got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^756839 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders are just speed bumps on the information superhighway."