CoCom and Crypto Export

[futplex@pseudonym.com (Futplex)]

I just sent this to the firewalls list in reply to a message there, but I 
thought it might be of interest here too. 

-Futplex <futplex@pseudonym.com>
hmmm, haven't seen any mail from the list in a suspiciously long time....

Forwarded message:
> Subject: Re: International Encryption Protocols
> To: Firewalls@GreatCircle.COM
> Date: Wed, 11 Oct 1995
> 
> Ted Doty writes:
> > Certainly the signatory countries to the CoCom treaty all enforce similar
> > export controls to those enforced by the USA.  Therefore, do not go looking
> > to purchase cryptography in the UK for use outside the UK.
> 
> I think this is misleading. CoCom, the Coordinating Committee for
> Multilateral Export Controls, amounted to a non-proliferation pact to
> prevent the spread of supercomputers and other hot potatoes beyond the
> club of countries to untrusted (non-CoCom) countries. As far as I can tell it
> did not erect export barriers _between member countries_, except perhaps some
> ordinary red tape. 
> 
> Before it officially dissolved in early 1994, CoCom included, among others,
> all of the G7 plus a healthy chunk of Western Europe: Australia, Belgium, 
> Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, 
> the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Turkey, the U.K., and the U.S.
> According to http://www.chemie.fu-berlin.de/adressen/org-fact.html, Austria, 
> Finland, Ireland, South Korea, New Zealand, Singapore, Sweden, and Switzerland
> were voluntarily cooperating with the export restrictions.
> 
> As far as CoCom was concerned, you could generally sell crypto from Britain
> to most of the net. This is a far cry from the position of the U.S. ITAR,
> which prohibits the export of strong confidentiality-protecting crypto to the
> U.K., for example.
> 
> Most of the other CoCom signatories do _not_ enforce export controls similar
> to the U.S. ones.   
> 
> [...]
> > Note: the treaty has expired, but the signatory countries seem to still be
> > willing to follow it.  Nobody really wants to see strong crypto widely
> > deployed.
> 
> Make that "No government really wants...." and I'll agree with you.
> 
> BTW, ftp://ftp.eff.org/pub/CAF/law/software-export-law contains an 
> interesting, detailed memo dated 95/03/06, from a California law firm, giving
> an "Update on Current Status of U.S. Export Administration Regulations on 
> Software Exports".
> 
> -Futplex <futplex@pseudonym.com>
>