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Re: US Encryption Policy Change Now Official!



On 13/1/2000 Bear Giles wrote:

Finally, remember that this new policy is not the final word for
all time.  I'm sure that the bureaucrats balanced the calls for
totally unlimited export rules against the apparent indifference of
users to 40-, 48- and 56-bit systems.  If they realize in six months
that every major Linux distribution provides secure-RPC, -NFS,
X authentication, Kerberos, and tentative kernel support for IPSEC
*and* the libraries for 128-bit keys are regularly downloaded from
foreign sites, I doubt that the 64-bit limit would remain for long.
However this requires that our community show a real interest in
security - if we just stand around waiting for Godot many people
would reasonably conclude that there's really no widespread interest
in strong cryptology and the cypherpunks are a nothing but a loud-
mouthed fringe group.

this is the thing I hope for, I really want the true strong cryptography to continue to be available outside the US, to be imported just like now, for me this changes nothing as i would always get the non-US versions anyway, 64 bit is not good enough IMO.

Perhaps what they are hoping for is that people will not bother making strong cryptography since its more convenient to be able to export from the US. (this assumes they think people will consider 64 bit `good enough')


--
Ethan Benson
To obtain my PGP key: http://www.alaska.net/~erbenson/pgp/


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