Exporting crypto from Japan : Was Tim May's offensive racism (was: about RC4)

[Joichi Ito]

At 09:02 97/11/14 -0700, Tim May wrote:
> Which explains why that Japanese-produced RSA chip was suddenly withdrawn
> from the market shortly after Jim Bidzos held it up in fron of Congress as
> an example of how foolish the U.S. export laws are. The Japanese stooges
> were ordered by their masters in Washington to conform to U.S. policy.
> 
> --Tim May

By the way, the chip was not "withdrawn from the market." MITI
has not approved its export. The imporant point is, a recent regulation
called the "Gyousei Tetsuzuki Hou" (translates roughly as,
"ministry administrative law/guidelines") makes it illegal for a ministry
to regulate or restrict an activity without a clear and easy to understand
process and documentation. MITI's current method of "case-by-case"
export permission could technically be viewed as a breach of this
law/regulation. Also, the "Gyousei Tetsuzuki Hou" has time limits
for ministries to respond to requests. I have informed RSA that they
could take MITI to court on this one, but as far as I know, they haven't.
So, yes, Japanese stooges were involved, but companies such as RSA
haven't taken advantage of their legal position in pushing the export
of their products from Japan.

Maybe we should try to get Mr. Nakatuji to apply for a permit to
export his Misty stuff. ;-P

 - Joi

P.S. We had a cypherpunks-j meeting the other day and no one
knew who this Nakatuji guy was. I thought he might be some anti-Japanese
person trying to discredit the Japanese cypherpunks, but another participant
pointed out that the curses he launched at Tim were very authentic
Japanese so my theory was unlikely. For the record, he is not one
of "us". Whatever that means...
--
PGP Key: http://pgp.ai.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x2D9461F1
PGP Fingerprint: 58F3 CA9A EFB8 EB9D DF18  6B16 E48D AF2A 2D94 61F1
Home Page: http://domino.garage.co.jp/jito/joihome.nsf
To subscribe to my personal mailing list send mailto:friends-subscribe at ji.to