Grumpiness warning: I have held my tongue the past few months as all of these "this t-shirt has been declared a munition!!!" messages went out, but I can hold my tongue no longer. At 4:43 AM 9/4/95, Futplex wrote:

I wrote:

...

With respect to possession within the U.S., there aren't any laws stopping you from waving strong cryptography around wherever you like (at least, not yet).

---- ...and in private email, Jim Ray pointed out that showing the shirt to a foreign national might technically violate ITAR...

Nope, no more so than letting a foreign national read Schneier's book is a violation of the ITAR. If you dispute this, ask whether Schneier's book is banned from export (the book, not the optional diskette). It isn't. Nor are other cryptography _books_ banned from export. I'm not minimizing the issue of export of machine-readable code, as in diskettes. But to claim that a blurry, printed on cotton "barcode" is even remotely in the same class as exporting a workable set of cryptographic system routines, or that letting a furriner merely "gaze upon" this blurry barcode, is a violation of the ITARs is laughable.

Yeah, I suppose I overstated it a bit. It appears that if the ITAR do cover the shirt (unclear at present, AFAIK -- any news on the CJR, Raph ?), then flashing it at a furriner could constitute a violation. Thanks for the correction.

No. No more so than "flashing" a copy of a crypto book would constitute a violation.

The gist of my previous message remains: No local or state authority in the U.S. (of which I'm aware) classifies strong cryptography as a munition, weapon, etc. I haven't heard of any restrictions on transporting crypto across state lines, either. Unless the Feds start cracking down on high schools, or the Perl-RSA shirt somehow violates some school dress code, (gang colors ? ;) the original questioner need not fret about his son wearing the shirt to school.

It was this series of posts about whether wearing the "munitions t-shirt" near schools was a crime or not that made me think the silly season had arrived. If the t-shirt is a munition, and books are munitions, then libraries must be real "ammunition dumps," ready to explode at any minute. News at 11. Let's get real. --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."