At 12:16 PM 1/18/96 -0500, "Richard Martin" <rmartin@aw.sgi.com> wrote:

The Lotus `solution' seems to be the action of an American company shipping a product which effectively says to foreign users, "We don't care about you as a market."

To play Sternlight's Advocate for the moment, I'll have to disagree with you here. 40-bit encryption really is a joke, for any business data worth protecting (and Lotus Notes is primarily a business product.) 64-bit RC4 encryption, while less than ideal, is still usable for most applications; it's certainly stronger than DES by a couple orders of magnitude, which is probably enough for now. Yes, the Yanquis can wiretap you, but it's better than having _everybody_ wiretap you. (And besides, you're probably going to use the 128-bit smuggled version anyway.) This at least provides a product you can use with _some_ credibility, assuming it interoperates with the US version, which I think the 40-bit version did.

That this is the so-called "export" version is ironic. The keys are escrowed with the U.S. government, and no one else. The French government should rightly cry foul, for this is (a) encryption where they don't have the keys and (b) encryption where another government *does*.

The French can still ban it, or require you to register your keys, just as they can with the 40-bit version. Or ban products with menu items in English, if they think that's too encrypted for them. :-) C'est la guerre. #-- # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, stewarts@ix.netcom.com, Pager/Voicemail 1-408-787-1281 # # "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty" used to mean us watching # the government, not the other way around....