Munitions shirt (again)

So, Dave and I got free munitions shirts (they're different, though;
the font is smaller and they have a bunch of X'd out Constitutional
Amendments on the back; I think they ere designed by Joel Furr) for
our bug find.

So I'm wearing it today.  The thing is, I live in International House,
a residence that has 50% non-Americans.

So, any consensus as to whether it's actually illegal to do so?  I
remember some disagreement a few weeks ago that AFAIK wasn't resolved.

As far as I can tell, it's _technically_ illegal, but any LEO would be
out of his mind to try to enforce it (it would have to be a Fed, too,
wouldn't it?  Or can regular city cops get you for violating export
restrictions?).

   - Ian

On Wed, 20 Sep 1995, Ian Goldberg wrote:

> So, Dave and I got free munitions shirts (they're different, though;
> the font is smaller and they have a bunch of X'd out Constitutional
> Amendments on the back; I think they ere designed by Joel Furr) for
> our bug find.

Good.

> 
> So I'm wearing it today.  The thing is, I live in International House,
> a residence that has 50% non-Americans.
> 
> So, any consensus as to whether it's actually illegal to do so?  I
> remember some disagreement a few weeks ago that AFAIK wasn't resolved.
> 
> As far as I can tell, it's _technically_ illegal, but any LEO would be
> out of his mind to try to enforce it (it would have to be a Fed, too,
> wouldn't it?  Or can regular city cops get you for violating export
> restrictions?).
> 
>    - Ian
> 

Funny, this thread sounds awfully familiar.  In fact, I think I wrote 
almost this _exact same post_ about 3 weeks ago, just substituting 
"Berkeley" for "Towson State University".  I mentioned the fact that I 
live in the International House of _my_ campus, and we discussed the 
legality of my wearing it.  We hashed over it for a few days, and never 
really came to a real answer, since ITAR is rather vague in that area.

I might add, however, that two days ago I wore my RSA shirt to my sound
design class, where the guy I happened to sit down next to recognized it,
was familiar with what it stood for, and knew all about the Zimmerman
case; not because he was a crypto enthusiast or a comp sci major, but
because he works for customs at Baltimore-Washington International
Airport. 

This event really changed my point of view considering ITAR... I figured 
that it was just one of those dumb laws that _nobody_ really paid much 
attention to except for the FBI and that was only because they were 
looking for a way to nail Zimmerman for writing good crypto.  I had 
assumed that ITAR was something that  customs agents/L. E. O's/etc. 
learned about, took a  test on it, then forgot about it the next day.

Interesting... they _really_ are serious, aren't they?

-=me=-

kelli@zeus.towson.edu       Geek Code v3.0      http://zeus.towson.edu/~kelli/
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"All the world will be your enemy, Prince With The Thousand Enemies. . .
And whenever they catch you, they will kill you.
But first, they must catch you. . ."
                                           -Richard Adams

>Date: Wed, 20 Sep 1995 15:26:08 -0400 (EDT)
>From: "K. M. Ellis" <kelli@zeus.towson.edu>

[re. wearing an RSA T-shirt in the presence of furreners]

The CRYPTO conference sounds like a better alleged violation of export --
unless you take your shirt off and give it to the furrener or lie down on
his scanner to scan your bar codes (or maybe let him take a picture of
the bar codes). :-)

It was the late 70's when an over-enthusiastic person from NSA complained
to the IEEE that it was about to hold a conference including foreign
nationals at which crypto would be discussed.  This is clearly in violation
of the ITAR (dissemination of controlled technical data).  The IEEE
generally thumbed its nose at the NSA person and shortly thereafter (1980)
the ICAR was founded and CRYPTO conferences were held.

CRYPTO includes multiple attendees from the crypto services of (former)
(?current?) unfriendly governments.  (is France friendly? :-) It also has
multiple NSA attendees -- so it's not going on in secret from the gov't.

>I might add, however, that two days ago I wore my RSA shirt to my sound
>design class, where the guy I happened to sit down next to recognized it,
>was familiar with what it stood for, and knew all about the Zimmerman
>case; not because he was a crypto enthusiast or a comp sci major, but
>because he works for customs at Baltimore-Washington International
>Airport. 
>
>This event really changed my point of view considering ITAR... I figured 
>that it was just one of those dumb laws that _nobody_ really paid much 
>attention to except for the FBI and that was only because they were 
>looking for a way to nail Zimmerman for writing good crypto.  I had 
>assumed that ITAR was something that  customs agents/L. E. O's/etc. 
>learned about, took a  test on it, then forgot about it the next day.
>
>Interesting... they _really_ are serious, aren't they?

Well ...

I was at an AFCEA talk about export rules about 1.5 years ago and met a
special agent from Customs.  I asked him for Customs' policy on export of
crypto S/W and technical data by USENET News, FTP and WWW.  He seemed very
interested -- wanted my phone number -- was going to come out to visit to
see these sites offering this stuff.

He never came out.

I started e-mailing him asking him whether he was going to come get a tour
of the net -- and he stopped replying.

I can only assume that when he thought it was a single incident (like PRZ)
which could be tracked, he might follow it -- but when I started talking
about dozens or hundreds of people involved (e.g., all US persons talking
crypto techniques on sci.crypt) he lost interest.  I was going to show him
the MIT and TIS sites which release crypto code.  (Those sites have letters
from the State Dept. saying that what we do to restrict export is OK --
even if it is the honor system.)  I was going to show him how easy it is to
get crypto from overseas.

As I said, he lost interest.

 - Carl


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