From: Black Unicorn <unicorn@schloss.li>

What has consistently alarmed me is the United States trend of extending her own moral and ethical standards world wide. Granted the United States is the foremost world economic power, but the power to control markets and the political power to invade the sovereignty of other states are two distinct issues. The United States is, in one form or another, attempting to homogonize the legal systems of the world to comply with her own concept of what is "right" or "fair." This is disturbing.

I was encouraged to read the description by former NSA lawyer Stewart Baker of Japan's attitudes towards crypto policy (from the URL posted here by wb8foz@nrk.com, http://www.us.net/~steptoe/276915.htm). We can all take heart in what Baker finds alarming: In the United States and Europe, encryption policy is formed by a mix of interests. Advocates of business, national security agencies, and more recently the police -- all play a large role in the policy debate. This policy triumvirate is difficult to see in Japan. For a variety of reasons, commercial interests are predominant in Japanese government thinking about encryption. Time after time during my interviews, I was reminded that Japan was an island nation that has not had to defend itself for fifty years and so has not had to confront the national security concerns associated with encryption. And Japanese police face severe political and constitutional constraints on wiretapping, so the prospect of losing this criminal investigative tool seems not to be as troubling to the Japanese government as to the United States and many European nations. [...] All in all, the emerging Japanese consensus on cryptography could pose a major challenge to U.S. (and perhaps European) government hopes of striking a compromise between commercial and governmental interests with respect to cryptographic policy. If Japan puts the weight of its government and industry behind strong, unescrowed encryption, competitive pressure will quickly doom any attempt to influence this technology through export controls and standard-making. Governments will be forced to choose between overt regulation in the Russian and French manner or laissez-faire policies of the sort that now prevail in the domestic markets of countries like the United States, Great Britain, and Germany. I love the description of the choice facing the government, between laissez-faire policies versus the kind of system prevailing in Russia. This is a remarkably clear and frank description of the policy directions which are available. Hal