CDR: Re: RC4 source as a literate program
At 09:14 AM 9/2/00 -0400, Steven Furlong wrote:
<<begin quoted material>> As the President has made clear, encryption software is regulated because it has the technical capacity to encrypt data and by that jeopardize American security interests, not because of its expressive content. Exec. Order No. 13026, 1996 WL 666563.
Were this true, carrying a copy of _Applied Crypto_ (not including source) out of the country would be illegal. It is not. The law is an ass.
David Honig wrote:
At 09:14 AM 9/2/00 -0400, Steven Furlong wrote:
<<begin quoted material>> As the President has made clear, encryption software is regulated because it has the technical capacity to encrypt data and by that jeopardize American security interests, not because of its expressive content. Exec. Order No. 13026, 1996 WL 666563.
Were this true, carrying a copy of _Applied Crypto_ (not including source) out of the country would be illegal. It is not. The law is an ass.
Yah, Judge Gwin appears pretty clueless here. And don't forget how the PGP source code was exported: printed using a special font, then carried to Europe, then scanned and OCR'd. An awful lot of wasted effort, for no gain in the US's national security. By the way, you got your aphorism wrong. It's "The law is a ass"; Mr. Bumble in Charles Dickins' _Oliver Twist_. Mr. Bumble was pretty much "a" ass himself, so I'm not sure that quoting him conveys quite the message that is usually intended. -- Steve Furlong, Computer Condottiere Have GNU, will travel 518-374-4720 sfurlong@acmenet.net
At 09:14 AM 9/2/00 -0400, Steven Furlong wrote:
<<begin quoted material>> As the President has made clear, encryption software is regulated because it has the technical capacity to encrypt data and by that jeopardize American security interests, not because of its expressive content. Exec. Order No. 13026, 1996 WL 666563.
Is this much different from the future proclamation:
As the [Judge] has made clear, [DeCSS] software is regulated because it has the technical capacity to [decrypt] data and by that jeopardize American [economic] interests, not because of its expressive content. Exec. Order No. 666, WIPO No. 666
And how soon before posting of multimedia or filesharing tools requires the equivalent of the (unbounded) BXA/spook review/approval? "Ominous parallels"
participants (2)
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David Honig -
Steven Furlong