Re: Things we should be working on...

[Tim May <tcmay@got.net>]

At 12:12 AM -0700 9/3/97, Bill Stewart wrote:
>At 12:56 PM 9/2/97 -0700, Tim May wrote:
>>My understanding was that you had to do most of your work in Canada because
>>of U.S. restrictions on those with student visas?
>>Certainly you are just as much in violations of the EARS by going to Canada
>>to do your crypto work as Rivest and Company would be in by crossing into
>>Canada to develop stuff for RSADSI.
>>Am I missing something here?
>
>Yeah, you're missing that Ian's a Canadian, not subject to US laws when
>he's not in US territory, unlike Rivest (but not unlike Shamir.)
>Taking working papers with him might be an export problem, but
>taking ideas in his head isn't, and when he's at home, he can work,
>subject to Canadian limits on writing, publishing, and internetting crypto.
>If he wants to sell products based on his crypto work,
>there may be student visa issues involved, but there's a Canadian corporation
>that can take care of some of those problems for him.

"Sigh"

As I've answered four people with in private e-mail, I'm fully aware that
Ian is Canadian. This is why he presumably returns to Canada on vacations.
I think he's from Toronto, if memory serves.

But I was not aware that this exempted him from the U.S. Export
Administration laws, known variously as the Export Administration
Regulations (the EARs), the ITARs (old name), or related to the "Munitions
Act." I admit that the EARs are a dense read (cf. glimpses at several
sites, incl. http://bxa.fedworld.gov/ear.html). It's possible that a court
would rule that Ian's 10 months out of the year residency in the U.S. does
not make him subject to the EARs, but I think otherwise.

(Is Ian also exempt from the Espionage Act?)

Now the issue is whether Ian's admitted (here, today) use of trips to
Canada as a subterfuge to bypass the EARs is in fact an admission of
violation of the EARs.

Personally, my hunch is that nobody in D.C. much cares what Ian is now
doing. Not because he's not doing good work, but because they have no
interest in stopping this work. But this is a different thing from saying
that Ian is exempt from the EARs if he goes back to Canada to either finish
a piece of work started in California or to codify the thinking begun in
California. By any reasonable sense of the EARs, this would be as much a
violation of the EARs as if Jim Bidzos went to Greece on vacation and wrote
a new piece of software.

(Note that Bidzos is not a citizen of the United States. He retains Greek
citizenship. He is thus essentially analogous to Ian Goldberg, modulo some
issues of wealth and coding ability, and age.)

I am not saying Ian will be prosecuted or hassled. I am saying I think it
is poor legal advice to suggest that Ian, though he attends school in
California, is miraculously exempted from the force of the U.S. EARs when
he is temporarily back in Canada.

And I repeat what I understood Ian's situation to be, from what he
personally told me some months back: he is forbidden by U.S. Immigration
law from most kinds of normal employment while on a student visa in the
U.S. (graduate student stipends being not part of this "most"), and thus
must be back in Canada to act as an ordinary consultant or author.

This apparently has little to do with the point of evading the EARs. Could
Ian please clarify the situation?

--Tim May


There's something wrong when I'm a felon under an increasing number of laws.
Only one response to the key grabbers is warranted: "Death to Tyrants!"
---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
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."