[109284] in Cypherpunks
Why Wassenaar Works
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (John Young)
Tue Mar 16 23:46:53 1999
Date: Tue, 16 Mar 1999 20:22:29 -0500
To: cypherpunks@cyberpass.net
From: John Young <jya@pipeline.com>
Reply-To: John Young <jya@pipeline.com>
Excerpt from testimony today by John Barker, Deputy Assistant
Secretary for Export Controls, Bureau of Politico-Military
Affairs, U.S. State Department, on renewal of the Export
Administration Act and security risks of high-tech export:
"The Wassenaar Arrangement’s recent success in achieving
consensus on new multilateral export controls on encryption
products and software is a good example of these efforts.
Wassenaar experts had worked on this very complicated issue
for over a year, and several U.S. agencies were intimately
involved in developing our policy, including State, Defense,
Commerce, Justice and the National Security Agency.
The Attorney General and the Deputy Secretary of Defense
wrote letters to their foreign counterparts, and NSA worked
closely with similar agencies in other countries. The Deputy
Secretary of State and senior National Security Council
officials also made personal contacts in support of the U.S.
approach, and our embassies in Wassenaar capitals conducted
a series of demarches. And our ultimate success in achieving
consensus, which also took other countries’ concerns into
account, would not have been possible without the extraordinary
personal efforts of Under Secretary of Commerce David Aaron,
who had personally worked this issue for more than two years --
including through many bilateral meetings with other leading
encryption exporting-countries -- and led the "end game"
negotiations on encryption at the Wassenaar plenary in Vienna
last December."
Full testimony of Barker and several others at:
http://www.senate.gov/~banking/99_03hrg/031699/witness.htm
