Re: Anti-Electronic Racketeering Act of 1995 (fwd)

[Tatu Ylonen <ylo@cs.hut.fi>]

> So, what countries are left free of encryption regulations? (English 
> speaking preffered, with affordable net access.)  Time to see about 
> getting a new passport...

Finland, as far as I know, does not have any restrictions on
encryption, and has a friendly population.  Finnish is indecipherable
at first, but almost everybody can speak English (at least the younger
population).  There is a big shortage of competent computer and
electronics engineers.  Nokia Telecommunications (a major mobile phone
manufacturer) for example would need much more competent people than
they can get - not to mention the smaller companies.

Finland has excellent network connections - typical ftp rates from the
US are tens of kilobytes per second (except at peak hours).  There is
a lot of competition among the internet service provides.  About
$20/months gets you 28.8k dialup ppp (1-2 hours/day at that rate, I
think).  Another provider charges about 5 cents per minute.  A leased
64k line is around $100/month.

The climate is nice during the summer (15-25 Celsius typical), and
cold during the winter.

Taxes are outrageous though, so you really had better check that
first.  But, the taxes include things like medical insurance, pension
insurance, etc., and are thus not directly comparable.

And of course, we are now a member of the European Union, which
worries me a little on this front...

(Sorry, I just couldn't resist the temptation :-)

   Tatu