Re: Laws Outside the U.S.
Germany: There is no restriction of import or use of cryptography ( _yet_ ). There are some restrictions about export and transmission of encrypted data: - Encryption soft/hardware can not be exported to communist countries (COCOM) without problems. I don't know exactly, whether it is forbidden, must be licensed, or must be registered in any way. - There are two kinds of amateur radio, the CB (citizen band) and the licensed amateur radio, which requires a personal license. On this licensed radio it is not allowed to send encrypted messages, but as far as I know nobody cares and nobody checks. The sense was to make you use the telephone and pay. - There was a restriction about the telephone net. You are not allowed to transmit anything but voice. I don't know what happened with that restriction since everyone uses fax and modem legally. At the moment they have a lot of problems with such laws. They have to decide whether they are valid or not, because most european countries have joined the European Community. The EC forces their countries to equalize their laws in the sense of "what you can do in one country, you can do everywhere". Sometimes this is very helpfull (e.g. use of modems. Most of them where illegal in Germany, meanwhile nearly all of them have a license), sometimes they have silly ideas (e.g. laws about ingredients of noodles or beer). If France forbids the import of crypto software, but allows to sell it inside of France, then I can sue France, because the french programmer can sell his programs in France and I can't. I'm sure we will get a special crypto law within the next years. Hadmut
On Sep 21, 1:08pm, Hadmut Danisch wrote:
- Encryption soft/hardware can not be exported to communist countries (COCOM) without problems. I don't know exactly, whether it is forbidden, must be licensed, or must be registered in any way.
This had an interesting side-effect in the GSM specifications, as there was a lot of dispute about how secure GSM should be. As West Germany (as it was then) had a lot of borders with the Eastern Bloc, they wanted very strong crypto. France wanted very weak crypto. Considering the players involved, you can imagine the rest. A5 ended up being based on a French design, so I think we can draw the obvious conclusions. Although I have been told that the A5 implementation available on the network bears little relation to the final one released in GSM, I believe that the current feeling is that it has a key entropy of 40 bits maximum, if that. Ian.
Hadmut Danisch writes:
The EC forces their countries to equalize their laws in the sense of "what you can do in one country, you can do everywhere".
If France forbids the import of crypto software, but allows to sell it inside of France, then I can sue France, because the french programmer can sell his programs in France and I can't.
Isn't it inevitable that this will -- for the same reasons of equity among the member countries -- evolve into a single set of laws governing the *use* of crypto throughout the EC?
I'm sure we will get a special crypto law within the next years.
Can you provide any predictions as to its content? It seems to me that the EC may be a *huge* force -- for good or ill -- with respect to crypto, depending on which way the rules fall out. In the first place, because of the sheer size of the EC and the combined power and populace of its member countries, but also because any internal crypto advantage the EC is perceived to hold might be an additional spur to liberalization of US crypto export policy. -- Jeff
participants (3)
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danisch＠ira.uka.de -
Ian Farquhar -
Jeff Barber