[44475] in Cypherpunks

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Re: Info on Netscape's key escrow position

daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (James A. Donald)
Sat Dec 2 11:19:02 1995

Date: Fri, 01 Dec 1995 08:01:59 -0800
To: Jeff Weinstein <jsw@netscape.com>, cypherpunks@toad.com
From: "James A. Donald" <jamesd@echeque.com>

At 11:01 PM 12/1/95 -0800, Jeff Weinstein wrote:
>
>  I think the gist
> of it is that if governments require key escrow, we will have to do it
> in order to sell our products with encryption into those countries.

Jim Clark wrote:
>> But if we do not come up with a solution to this problem that is
>> acceptable to each government, we will not be able to export our products,
>> except with a short key length (e.g. 40 bit keys), and that will not be
>> acceptable to corporate customers in other countries.

I read it as saying:  "Let us help the government invade the privacy
of our customers, so that the government will do us some favors in export 
licensing", rather than "Well if they stick it to us at gunpoint,
we will submit."

I would appreciate some further "clarification".

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