Crypto Exports, Europe, and Conspiracy Theories

[Adam Shostack]

Timothy C. May wrote:

| You have to ask yourself this question: "Why are there no cryptographically
| strong products--finished products, not specific ciphers or chunks of
| code--developed in Europe and freely imported into the U.S.?"

	There are.  If you buy a Gauntlet Internet firewall from TIS,
you can also buy a German T1 speed DES card for it.  I believe the
code was written by TIS's London office.  The Israeli Firewall-1
(version 2) firewall offers VPN (Virtual Private Networks) with some
decent encryption scheme.

	There are not yet a lot of products, and these, as Tim will
doubtless point out, are somewhat obscure, not mass market products.
I would attribute that to the nature of information in the
international marketplace.  There is not 'perfect information' but
very imprecise and foggy information.  Most of us don't know anyone
who has bought a foriegn crypto product (heck, how many of us have
bought a crypto product at all?).  Incidentally, TIS (ww.tis.com) did
a survey of forgien crypto products which is on the web.

	There are very few 'full blown' encryption products out there.
PGP seems to have the most users, but I don't know of any real
compitition for it, inside or outside the US.

Adam

-- 
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once."
					               -Hume