Re: Articles on RC5 and GOST in January 95 Dr Dobbs Journal

At 7:17 PM 12/11/94, Timothy C. May wrote:
>In my view, the whole export issue is a joke anyway. Anyone with
>access to Bruce's code could quite easily remail it, with or without
>first hiding the exact form by compressing, encrypting, or stegging
>it.
>
>That this hasn't happened--so far as we (or I) know--says more about
>other things than about the laws supposedly barring such export.

Well, it might actually say quite a bit about such laws, namely that they
scare people into _not_ remailing Bruce's code.  As is the point of such
laws, obviously. So they appear to be working, right?  People don't want to
do something that is illegal, even if it would be easy to do so.

But I had actually kind of assumed that this sort of thing _had_ happened.
If anyone in some other country wanted to get a hold of Bruce's code, it
would not be dificult to do so.  And I figure someone probably has wanted
to do such a thing, and probably has done it.

If anyone out in non-U.S. land wants Bruce's code, and has been unable to
get a hold of it, I bet a posting to alt.privacy.anon-server, or to the
cypherpunks list, would result in people volunteering (via anon remailers,
of course) to break the export laws.  The non-U.S. citizens asking for the
code wouldn't be breaking any laws, so they don't even need to use an
encrypted address block, they can just ask publically. A U.S. citizen using
PGP and going through a chain of 8 or 10 remailers (including non-U.S.
ones) is not likely to be caught.

Of course I'd never do such a thing, especially after talking about it
publically on cypherpunks.

Jonathan Rochkind wrote:

> But I had actually kind of assumed that this sort of thing _had_ happened.
> If anyone in some other country wanted to get a hold of Bruce's code, it
> would not be dificult to do so.  And I figure someone probably has wanted
> to do such a thing, and probably has done it.

I'm confused. Isn't this precisely what I was saying in my post? That
if anyone really wanted it, it's easily and anonymously remailed?

I'm not saying no one wants it. As pedagogic material, with the text,
it's very useful. But it's not "productized" into a standaone,
runnable, item that a lot of people can use (like PGP, for example).

> If anyone out in non-U.S. land wants Bruce's code, and has been unable to
> get a hold of it, I bet a posting to alt.privacy.anon-server, or to the
> cypherpunks list, would result in people volunteering (via anon remailers,
> of course) to break the export laws.  The non-U.S. citizens asking for the
> code wouldn't be breaking any laws, so they don't even need to use an
> encrypted address block, they can just ask publically. A U.S. citizen using
> PGP and going through a chain of 8 or 10 remailers (including non-U.S.
> ones) is not likely to be caught.

Which is what I said in my post.

--Tim


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