At 08:30 AM 1/13/96 -0800, thad@hammerhead.com (Thaddeus J. Beier) wrote:

Scrambled software gets an OK

-- Exports: Foreign encoding unfair to U.S. firms, Commerce Department says.

Bloomberg Business News

WASHINGTON -- The Commerce Department will recommend easing export controls on encryption software after a study by the department and the National Security Agency found the restrictions are hurting U.S. firms, Commerce Secretary Ron Brown said.

We discussed this a bit at the Bay Area cpunks meeting yesterday. It'd be fun to know the politics involved and what we'll get out of this, but "easing export controls" could be anything from "dropping the limits on anything but designed-for-the-military crypto" to "64 bits with escrow". And, of course, "we'll release a policy statement in a few months" isn't highly informative either. On the other hand, it's an invitation for lobbying and public comment, so we might as well take advantage of it. #-- # 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....