Hi Cypherpunks. I fell on that text in the Canadian Firearms Digest, V2 #506 today. Maybe somebody will want to look into it to see what part of ITAR was modified and if it will affect crypto... Please feel free to forward to every possibly interested party. Ciao jfa ============================================================= Date: Wed, 22 Jul 1998 06:29:54 -0600 From: Rod Regier <rr@dymaxion.ca> Subject: US Export controls saga update (http://www.pmdtc.org/oas.PDF) indicates that US State Dept. expects the current exemption of Canada from the ITAR export permit requirements for firearms and ammunition (and parts thereof) to be rescinded soon. When I spoke to a US State Department employee, they indicated they were being told it is going to happen in a few days. They gave me a Canadian government employee counterpart contact information (?Dept of Foreign Affairs?). I spoke with the Canadian government contact, and was pleasantly surprised for a change. I was told that Canada plans to contest this threatened action, since in part it could have wider trade implications outside the firearms and ammunition realm. This is certainly refreshing, since on the whole the current Canadian administration has generally leapt at any chance to put it to the Canadian firearms community. My contact expressed the belief that a change in Canada's ITAR permit exemption status by the United States cannot be accomplished solely by Executive branch action, but must be cleared thru the Legislative branch (Congress) too. If that is indeed the case, it is much less certain of approval, since the anti-gunners may control the US Executive branch, but they don't control US Congress at this time. - -- Rod Regier, Software Development bus: (902)422-1973 x108 Dymaxion Research Ltd., 5515 Cogswell St., fax: (902)421-1267 Halifax, Nova Scotia, B3J 1R2 Canada email: RRegier@dymaxion.ca corporate url: http://www.dymaxion.ca Jean-Francois Avon, B.Sc. Physics, Montreal, Canada   DePompadour, Société d'Importation Ltée      Limoges fine porcelain and french crystal   JFA Technologies, R&D physicists & engineers      Instrumentation & control, LabView programming PGP keys: http://bs.mit.edu:8001/pks-toplev.html PGP ID:C58ADD0D:529645E8205A8A5E F87CC86FAEFEF891  PGP ID:5B51964D:152ACCBCD4A481B0 254011193237822C