Re: Hooks to Crypto>

["Andrew D Meredith" <meredith@ecid.cig.mot.com>]

On Jul 28,  2:09pm, Dr. Frederick B. Cohen wrote:
> Subject: Re: Hooks to Crypto>
> ...
> > > Actually, neither hooks nor encryption are unexportable, you
> > > just need a license to export them.
> ...
>
> > I hope I'm not alone in wondering why on earth this is the case.
>
> They don't want to encourage encryption if they can avoid it.  It
> impairs their ability to gather intelligence.

I kind of meant "why they think they can" rather than "why they want
to". One can't really help being aware these days what the US
government (and indeed many others) are trying to do.

> Legal? What makes you think so? It hasn't made it to the courts yet

Oh ... I see ... just like the rest of this stuff, only more so.

> because people in the US aren't willing to risk jail for over their
> right to do it.  The only court case I am aware of was the RSA case
> and in that one, the courts ruled against the NSA - but in today's
> political and economic environment, people who do cryptography
> don't want to risk it.

Judging by the PZ case, I can't say as I can really blame them. it
would be better of course if they would go for it, but ...

> > The hooks are of course completely useless in and of themselves.
> > You can only do anything useful with them if you have the
> > matching crypto package.
>
> Not really right.  It's very easy to change a compression hook
> into an encryption hook using standard off-the-shelf shareware,
> public domain software, or commercial products.

I probably should have written "a crypto package" instead of "the
matching crypto package".

This would infer that anything that can cause information to be piped
out to a package and then the result sucked back in would fall into
this category.

Hmmm

map ^Xe :,$! /bin/sh -c 'pgp -feast 2>/dev/tty^V|^V|sleep 4'^M^L

Everyone DELETE VI NOW !!! >;)

> > Yours a confused Brit ... who doesn't have this problem ... yet!!
>
> Don't bet on it.  If you really try to export top-flight encryption
> technology in a big way, you may find that your government can be
> just as opressive as mine.

Our lot tend to work in a different way to yours. Similar end result
of course, but different approach.

So when I said "yet". I was meaning that, at the moment, we have no
laws specifically refering to Cryptography and it's export, but the
approach I can see being taken would be:

1 - Find yourself a tenuous link with some Psycho-Baby-Killer group.
2 - Start a "This must be stopped" campain.
3 - Propose the "Internet Pornography Act"
4 - Shove it through before anyone can get together enough
    opposition to get it squashed. (and that would have to be a
    GREAT DEAL of opposition).

That's how they did the "Criminal Justice Act" which breaks both
European and International law in a great many places. That's how
they'll do the "Internet Pornography Act". It'll be just loose enough
to include just about anything they want it to.

>-- End of excerpt from Dr. Frederick B. Cohen


Andy M