Re: More problems for non-US?

[Jim Pick <jim@jimpick.com>]

"M.C. Vernon" <mcv21@cus.cam.ac.uk> writes:

> On Thu, 3 Dec 1998, John Goerzen wrote:
> 
> > According to http://biz.yahoo.com/rf/981203/3l.html, 33 more countries,
> > including Germany, have made exportation of encryption technologies illegal
> > (or at least some of them).  Even though I'm in the US, I view this as a
> > VERY serious problem.  Furthermore, I am concerned about the future of our
> > non-us archive.
> 
> I don't think any of the changes have been made law...

Of course, depending on the ways the existing laws are worded, this
stuff doesn't have to get passed into law in order for it to be
effective.

All countries already have customs laws, and they use the Wassenaar
wording to restrict export of armaments.  They may already have
provisions in place so that the lists of restricted materials can be
changed without rewriting any laws.  :-(

We'll probably only find out if this new Wassenaar Arrangement
agreement is going to affect us when ftp sites start to get shut down.
Enforcement actions in countries other than the U.S. may not even
happen.

I suspect that most of the countries are still rather ambivalent about
crypto controls, and they only agreed to the U.S. demands for crypto
controls as an appeasement measure.  I doubt the Finnish government is
going to try to put ssh out of business by refusing an export license.
Maybe Linus could talk that over with the Finnish president during his
visit.  :-)

I'd be surprised to see active enforcement.  Perhaps the odd person is
going to have his laptop siezed by confuzed customs agents because
he's got PGP installed...

It's still not a good sign.

Cheers,

 - Jim