Executive order on crypto

["Peter D. Junger" <junger@pdj2-ra.F-REMOTE.CWRU.Edu>]

Ok, stop squabbling.  Here is something important.

The President has issued a couple of Executive Orders today that
transfer crypto to Commerce (eventually) and that make things worse,
not better, as far as I can tell at a quick reading.

An important portion of the Executive Orders is a rehash of arguments
that the government has made unsuccessfully in the Bernstein case and
has also made in my case.

I found out about the order from a posting by Michael Froomkin on
Cyberia-L.  The URL of the Executive Order, for today at least, is:

  http://library.whitehouse.gov/PressReleases.cgi?date=0&briefing=4

Michael Froomkin has also put up a mirror at:

  http://www.law.miami.edu/~froomkin/nov96-regs.htm

I will have a copy up on my web server (http://samsara.law.cwru.edu)
before the evening is over.

It seems (again just at a quick reading) that the government is now
limiting, or pretending to limit, its regulations on the ``export''
of cryptographic software to communications over the internet or on
bulletin boards.  As I read the Executive Orders they require that the
final regulations shall contain the same sort of restrictions on
crypto information that the Computer Decency Act applies to
indecency--if the CDA cases are upheld by the Supreme Court, I think
that these provisions will be struck down on the authority of that
decision.

The Executive Orders are not yet in effect.  That awaits the
proclamation of final regulations, which may be hard to draft--or may
be issued on Monday for all I know.

And argument in Junger v. Christopher is scheduled for Wednesday.

Law is fun!

Peter
--
Peter D. Junger--Case Western Reserve University Law School--Cleveland, OH
Internet:  junger@pdj2-ra.f-remote.cwru.edu    junger@samsara.law.cwru.edu
		     URL:  http://samsara.law.cwru.edu