Re: NSA Lawyers Believe ITARs Would be Overturned if Tested in Court

[tcmay@got.net (Timothy C. May)]

At 5:32 AM 7/22/96, jim bell wrote:
>At 02:25 AM 7/22/96 -0700, Timothy C. May wrote:
>
>>(Not all of them, presumably. Shipment of hardware ("arms") would likely
>>not be affected. But the ITARs that stop the spread of knowledge, published
>>papers, and speech (such as speaking where a foreigner can hear!) would
>>likely be overturned.)
>>--Tim May
>
>Which raises an interesting question:  Why aren't they (still) restricting
>PC-type computers for export?  While it might not appear to make a great
>deal of sense either, a PC is just as much a tool for encryption as the
>software which runs on it.  And it's obvious that given the two scenarios
>below:

But they _are_ (so far as I know, though I haven't checked recently).

That is, there are export restrictions on computers and programs which can
perform certain mathematical operations faster than some specfied limit.
For example, FFTs faster than a certain rate.

My copy of Mathematica, updated less than 18 months ago, says "Not for
Export," and this was not because it contained any crypto code, but because
of the performance on certain algorithms (on commonly available machines).

COCOM-type restrictions were relaxed several years ago, of course.

And a lot of the old COCOM restrictions were not on export per se, but on
export to specific countries. Including by transshipment
("CPU-laundering").

--Tim May

Boycott "Big Brother Inside" software!
We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, we know that that ain't allowed.
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Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
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