[6418] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Re: Response from Commerce Dept to "Is this man a crypto-criminal?"
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Eric Murray)
Tue Jan 18 13:51:18 2000
Message-ID: <20000118103828.42385@slack.lne.com>
Date: Tue, 18 Jan 2000 10:38:28 -0800
From: Eric Murray <ericm@lne.com>
To: Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>
Cc: Tim May <tcmay@got.net>, cypherpunks@cyberpass.net, cryptography@c2.net
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In-Reply-To: <4.3.0.29.0.20000118123549.00b49470@mail.well.com>; from Declan McCullagh on Tue, Jan 18, 2000 at 12:37:09AM -0500
On Tue, Jan 18, 2000 at 12:37:09AM -0500, Declan McCullagh wrote:
> According to the Commerce Department, the list of "denied persons" is at:
> http://www.bxa.doc.gov/DPL/Default.htm
>
> And the list, I'm told in email, is "not a problem if you are posting
> something." By that I assume they mean on the web.
How often is an exporter supposed to check the List? If Alice checks
the list on Monday and on tuesday afternoon emails crypto.c to
Bob@terrorist.org, is she in trouble if Bob@terrorist.org was added to
the List on tuesday morning? If Alice isn't required to check the List
immediately prior to every export, what is a reasonable frequency of
checking the List? (besides the obvious answer of "none" that is)
What happens if she exports crypto.c to Bob@terrorist.org on monday and
three weeks later Bob@terrorist.org is added to the List? Would Alice
still be prosecuted because the person who reads mail sent to
crypto@bxa.doc.gov has just now gotten around to reading Alice's mail
and checking it against a current copy of the List? How will the BXA
determine when Alice's export took place?
How is Alice supposed to know if Bob@yahoomail.com is really Bob Smith
the terrorist who is on the list, or Bob Jones, upstanding crypto
researcher? People on the net often communicate and work together
without knowing their True Names. Considering that the List contains no
email addresses and many people on the List seem to have multiple
names, unless Bob@yahoomail.com tells Alice explicitly that he's on the
List there's no way for Alice to know.
There's enough holes in this thing to drive a Ryder truck through it.
I'd like to think that it's just the case of someone in BXA saying
"hey, we'll take advantage of this Internet thing to make everyone's
lives easier" and not thinking through all the ramifications. But
I suspect that no one at BXA takes this seriously as a way to
report exports and it's simply a regulatory placeholder and
possibly a selective enforcement mechanisim.
--
Eric Murray www.lne.com/~ericm ericm at the site lne.com PGP keyid:E03F65E5
