Re: Anti-Electronic Racketeering Act of 1995
No one seems to have pointed this out, so: (maybe it's obvious to everyone else)
"Sec. 1030A. Racketeering-related crimes involving computers "(a) It shall be unlawful--
. . .
"(2) to distribute computer software that encodes or encrypts electronic or digital communications to computer networks that the person distributing knows, or reasonably should know, is accessible to foreign nationals and foreign governments, regardless of whether such software has been designated nonexportable."
IANAL, but it seems to me that if I EMAIL a copy of PGP to, say, Tim May, that I have just "distributed computer software .... to a computer network ...accessible to foreign nationals ..." even though it was "private" e-mail. Comments, anyone? Anyone? Bueller? ;-)
Get a copy of this bill from: ftp://ftp.loc.gov/pub/thomas/c104/s974.is.FTP and read it.
Betcher ass. -- Marshall "The constitution. It's not perfect, but it's a damn sight better than what we've got."
IANAL, but it seems to me that if I EMAIL a copy of PGP to, say, Tim May, that I have just "distributed computer software .... to a computer network ...accessible to foreign nationals ..." even though it was "private" e-mail.
It seems to me that this bill is so broad as to be unworkable, and that could work in our favor. I haven't read the full text, and I'm not a lawyer, but my reading of the excerpts posted here suggest that even stuff that's been *approved* for export by NSA could be prohibited. What would be the status of stuff like NIS+ under this bill? The Netscape commerce server?
Marshall Clow writes:
"(2) to distribute computer software that encodes or encrypts electronic or digital communications to computer networks that the person distributing knows, or reasonably should know, is accessible t
o
foreign nationals and foreign governments, regardless of whether such software has been designated nonexportable."
IANAL, but it seems to me that if I EMAIL a copy of PGP to, say, Tim May, that I have just "distributed computer software .... to a computer network ...accessible to foreign nationals ..." even though it was "private" e-mail.
Depends on how "computer network" is defined in the statute. Perry
participants (3)
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alex -
mclow＠coyote.csusm.edu -
Perry E. Metzger