[13534] in Cypherpunks
Re: NSA & State Fears ITAR Lawsuits
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Perry E. Metzger)
Thu May 12 07:41:57 1994
To: sommerfeld@orchard.medford.ma.us (Bill Sommerfeld)
Cc: tcmay@netcom.com, cypherpunks@toad.com, gnu@cygnus.com
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Wed, 11 May 1994 22:39:46 EDT."
<199405120239.WAA00421@orchard.medford.ma.us>
Reply-To: perry@imsi.com
Date: Thu, 12 May 1994 07:35:57 -0400
From: "Perry E. Metzger" <perry@snark.imsi.com>
Bill Sommerfeld says:
> Someone who's had dealings with the NSA and State over these issues
> saw some memos, but was not allowed to make copies of them, which
> indicated that State's lawyer's were very concerned that an ITAR case
> involving software *not* ever reach the courts, because they felt the
> government's case was very weak and that a probable loss would be a
> serious setback in other areas.
>
> Is there any chance that these memos would be subject to release under
> the FOIA?
Probably. They would probably make excellent ammo in an ITAR lawsuit
if they actually existed and State actually "found" them in fulfilling
the FOIA request. I would suggest that someone with experience in
directing FOIA requests get details from Tim and then try to extract
the memos in question.
Perry
