Re: ACM/IEEE Letter on Cryp

[frantz@netcom.com (Bill Frantz)]

At  9:58 AM 4/6/96 -0800, jim bell wrote:
>[on the Burns bill]
>At 04:55 PM 4/3/96 -0500, Dave Banisar wrote:
>>The draft bill which currently exists only takes the export controls on
>>crpyto. The provisions on key escrow, criminal penalities and other problems
>>are not in there and Burns staff have no intention of letting them in. The
>>actual bill will be introduced in about 2 weeks.
>>-dave
>
>That sounds okay as far as it goes, but I can see a potential problem.  Your 
>wording above is unclear, but if the Burns bill totally eliminates export 
>controls that's great. However, we've frequently heard talk of "compromises" 
>like the Leahy bill which seem to relate exportable encryption to that which 
>is already available overseas.  There have been suspicions around there that 
>this is intended to keep the American producers out of the market as long as 
>possible, which is still a problem.  I don't think that's acceptable.

I have no objection to the salami approach in this case.  The way the Burns
proposal has been described, it seems all together better than the current
situation.  We can fight the next battle after people realize that the four
horseman are well and truly loose, and that the world hasn't ended.  When
the Burns proposal has been written up into a bill and introduced, I expect
I will be writing my congresscritters asking them to support it.


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