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

[Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>]

Just woke up -- got up early today to head to ACLU Supreme Court
briefing -- but it strikes me that receiving nonescrowed crypto
through the mail might be like receiving kiddie porn.

Import restrictions, of course, will come with mandatory domestic key
escrow.

-Declan


On Tue, 1 Oct 1996, jim bell wrote:

> Date: Tue, 01 Oct 1996 20:32:05 -0800
> From: jim bell <jimbell@pacifier.com>
> To: Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>, cypherpunks@toad.com
> Subject: Re: White House crypto proposal -- too little, too late
> 
> 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
>