Re: New crypto regulations

["Timothy C. May" <tcmay@got.net>]

At 12:07 PM -0800 12/30/96, Lucky Green wrote:

>I expect the solution ultimately employed to use a method similar to what
>is currently used in color copiers and digital audio mastering equipment.
>Normal color copiers will copy just about all colors except the particular
>shade of green used in US currency. Consumer digital audio recording
>equipment makes use of copy protection features. Only hideously expensive
>"professional" equipment has the copy protection turned off.
>
>We might see something similar for printed source and OCR programs. Printed
>source will have to be printed in a specific font. A font that OCR programs
>are required to not recognize. OCR programs that do recognize this specific
>font will of course be export controlled.

I doubt this. This would be too absurd even for the feds...a special font
to be used in books?

As I said, hand-entry of text and code is already very cheap....and any
code fragments desired to be exported can be trivially taken out in any of
the zillions of floppies and disks crossing the borders each day, or the
Net of course (stego, hidden, remailed, whatever).

The whole book thing is an oddity...no meaningful crypto is going to be
helped or hindered by the book exception.

What _could_ conceivably happen is that export of some code fragment could
be given plausible deniability that an export violation occurred by having
a paper version distributed widely. "Honest...we didn't send PGP 3.0 to
Europe! Someone must've OCRed or manually typed in the code we published in
"PGP 3--The Text.""

This strategem would work even if the feds mandated some special
non-OCRable font (which I doubt could exist...if humans can read the font,
so can trainable OCR programs, which of course don't rely on having
libraries of particular fonts).

--Tim May


--Tim May


Just say "No" to "Big Brother Inside"
We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, I know that that ain't allowed.
---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
tcmay@got.net  408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA  | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
Higher Power: 2^1398269     | black markets, collapse of governments.
"National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."