[774] in WWW Security List Archive
Re: More restrictive controls on cryptography proposed in US Senate
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Albert Lunde)
Sun Jul 16 01:31:13 1995
To: mjmarkowitz@attmail.com
Date: Sat, 15 Jul 1995 21:05:44 -0500 (CDT)
Cc: www-security@ns2.rutgers.edu
In-Reply-To: <winATT-2.7-MJMARKOWITZ-302> from "mjmarkowitz@attmail.com" at Jul 15, 95 10:32:52 am
Reply-To: Albert-Lunde@nwu.edu (Albert Lunde)
From: Albert-Lunde@nwu.edu (Albert Lunde)
Errors-To: owner-www-security@ns2.rutgers.edu
> Albert: I see the point of your post, but not of this last comment.
> [...] Current export/munitions control laws
> already have an "extremely adverse effect on electronic commerce." Hard to
> imagine another law making it worse. :-)
[...]
> Wake up--as US citizens (I'm making this assumption based on your email
> address), our right to the "international use" of strong crypto was taken away
> years ago.
>
> BTW, vtw@vtw.org's (my god, another CPSR front? they seem to proliferate
> faster than rabbits!) reference to the "now-infamous Clipper Chip" in their
> S974 analysis was thrown in purely for its emotional appeal. "universal
> decoding device"? Like the one in Sneakers? Where can I buy one? Is there
> an unbiased review of S974 somewhere?
I might agree with some of your misgivings... I don't want to overstate
matters, but I'm not convinced things _can't_ get worse. This is
recent enough news you may have to judge for yourself.
If you send for the message I refered to, it has the text of the bill...
they claim quoted from the congressional record... I can't find another
copy online yet to verify this. The phase "universal decoding device"
is right out of the bill:
>(c) It shall be an affirmative defense to prosecution under this
>section that the software at issue used a universal decoding device
>or program that was provided to the Department of Justice prior to
>the distribution.'.
--
Albert Lunde Albert-Lunde@nwu.edu
