Solution for US/Foreign Software?

[jimbell@pacifier.com (jim bell)]

Manufacturers of handheld ham radios have to make them for at least three markets:  Japan, US, and Europe.  Since these devices are usually based on the same LSI chip for control, customization is usually done by installing/not installing certain tiny surface-mount devices (diodes?) on the PC board, which tells the "boss MOS" which frequency band edges to work with, etc.

Getting these radios to receive or transmit "out of band" is usually a simple matter of modiying these radios by adding/removing/moving these diodes to a different position.  The instructions on how to do this custom operation are not included with the radio itself, but the information always seems to get out there, and you can buy books which show the mods for practically every such radio in existence.

Okay, the problem as I see it is that USG doesn't want to approve encryption software for export that can use "excessively long" keys, yet Netscape (and others) want to be able to sell outside the country with full-feature encryption.  I think I have a solution.

1.  Write a program with limited encryption (40 bit?), with the encryption module in a file external to the  main program.
2.  Get export approval for this program.
3.  Write a module which replaces the encryption file, increasing key size to whatever you REALLY wanted in the first place.  (128-bit IDEA, 2000-bit PGP, etc.)
4.  Ship that new module with the old software to US customers.  Naturally, that new module will "leak," so anybody who buys the old program out of the country can convert to a fully-functional version by downloading it from a foreign bbs that just happens to have it.  The module can be encrypted/signed by the manufacturer so everyone can be sure of its identity and genuineness.


Better than nothing, I suppose.