Re: News: Sony/Philips has trouble exporting TV's

[Adam Back <aba@dcs.ex.ac.uk>]

Martin Minow <minow@apple.com> writes:
> Ern Hua 
> >    [quoting a news story]
> 
> At the Bernstein case oral arguments last September, I distinctly
> remember the government lawyer stating that the United States does
> not restrict "financial cryptography." Perhaps he should have
> qualified his argument somewhat.
> 
> This statement bothered me, as I cannot understand how an encryption
> algorithm can "know" that it is encrypting a financial transaction,
> rather than some non-financial document that would be export-restricted.

It's highly bogus, I'm sure, but what they seem to be doing is
allowing strong encryption for very small messages.  (eg SET, and at
least one other example I'm aware of)  Of course users could
manufacture hundreds of bogus small messages to produce one large
message.  But then they could probably also find multiple examples of
low bandwidth subliminal channels in the protocl/algorithms, and if
they're willing to use their own software they could use PGP anyway.

If it's anything like ITAR it will be decied on a case-by-case basis,
and they'll only give you permission if you conform to undisclosed,
and continually changing NSA internal policies.  Or perhaps it's just
if on their whim, it'd be difficult to distinguish.

The actual agenda as always is to discourage use of strong crypto both
inside and outside the US.

Adam
--
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