Re: carrick, Blowfish & the NSA

[shamrock@netcom.com (Lucky Green)]

At 21:12 4/13/96, Jerry Whiting wrote:

>Our marketing tag ("Encryption software so good, the Feds won't let us
>export it.") may well become a self-fulfilling prophecy.  But that's OK
>because having others adopt carrick is our real goal.  Building up a
>strong U.S. user base is OK while we wrestle with the NSA over how big a
>key length we can export.  Their initial response was that 40-bit keys
>were specific to RC2 and RC4 and that Blowfish was another kettle of fish
>(bad pun intended).
>
>Either way we're going to publish an extensive FAQ on carrick that should
>allow someone to not only work with carick but perhaps clone our efforts.
>IANAL but my understanding is that publishing such a document, with or
>without source code, and making it publicly available to non-U.S. citizens
>is perfectly legal.

I hope you are still going to publish source for US citicens?


-- Lucky Green <mailto:shamrock@netcom.com>
   PGP encrypted mail preferred.