Re: White House crypto proposal -- too little, too late

[jim bell <jimbell@pacifier.com>]

At 02:57 PM 10/1/96 -0700, Declan McCullagh wrote:
>
>
>---------- Forwarded message ----------
>Date: Tue, 1 Oct 1996 14:56:21 -0700 (PDT)
>From: Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>
>To: fight-censorship@vorlon.mit.edu
>Subject: White House crypto proposal -- too little, too late
[snip]
>What's even more disturbing is what the administration might do
>next. After the roundtable broke up, I chatted with Michael Vadis, one
>of the assistant deputy attorneys general who oversees national
>security issues. He said an international consensus is forming that
>terrorists can use crypto; therefore crypto must be controlled. The
>U.S. is certainly pushing this line at the OECD talks.
>
>"But it just takes one country to decide to export strong crypto," I said.
>"You're missing something," said Vadis.
>"What?" I asked. "Unless you're talking about import restrictions."
>"Exactly," he said.
>-Declan


An import restriction would be even less effective than the current export 
restrictions.  With an import restriction, a person need merely receive a 
given piece of software in the mail from an "unknown" benefactor, software 
that (surprise!) would have been illegal to import.  (the software doesn't 
even have to be mailed from outside the US, merely trucked in by a wetback 
and anonymously mailed by tossing it into the ubiquitous USnail PO Box.)   
Redistribution of this software would have to be legal, if for no other 
reason than nobody could prove it was imported illegally.  Nobody outside 
the US would have any standing to sue for copyright violation, because they 
couldn't import it and sell it without restrictions.

Jim Bell
jimbell@pacifier.com