[6370] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Re: BXA Press Release on New Regs
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (R. A. Hettinga)
Wed Jan 12 19:22:37 2000
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In-Reply-To: <200001122331.PAA17414@toad.com>
Date: Wed, 12 Jan 2000 19:15:53 -0500
To: John Gilmore <gnu@toad.com>, cypherpunks@toad.com, cryptography@c2.net,
dcsb@ai.mit.edu, Digital Bearer Settlement List <dbs@philodox.com>
From: "R. A. Hettinga" <rah@shipwright.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
At 3:31 PM -0800 on 1/12/00, John Gilmore wrote:
> In addition, the guidelines also implement agreements reached by
> the Wassenaar Arrangement in December 1998 by decontrolling
> 64-bit mass market products, 56-bit encryption items and 512-bit
> key management products. Today's changes do not affect
> restrictions on terrorist supporting states (Cuba, Iran, Iraq,
> Libya, North Korea, Sudan, and Syria), their nationals, and
> other sanctioned entities.
In other words, frankly, "Same shit, different day."
Welcome to Xeno's munitions policy, ladies and gentlemen: half-step back,
then half-step back, then half-step back, and so on, until everyone gives
up in disgust and exports crypto anyway. (Meanwhile the state takes half as
step back, and then half a step back, in infinite recursion....)
Not that such mummenchance matters in a world where strong cryptography is
freely available anyway, thanks to open source cryptography, like Mr.
Gilmore's FreeS/WAN effort, CryptoMozilla, Fortify, and so on.
Remember, to the Church, Galileo is still (just barely, in the same
Xenonian fashion) an apostate.
Since the state is, in a world of ubiquitous networks and financial
cryptography, going the way of the Church (i.e. more ceremony than
hegemony) I bet 1gAU (compounded) that, 400 years from now, cryptography
will *still* be a munition.
:-).
Cheers,
RAH
-----------------
R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@ibuc.com>
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
