Re: Regulation of citizen-alien communications (Was: Choices)

At 7:02 AM 2/11/96, lmccarth@cs.umass.edu wrote:
>Padgett writes:
>> Gov does have the right (in fact the duty) to regulate communications
>> between citizens and non-citizens/sites in other lands
>
>(not wishing to start a flamewar) Why do you think so ?

It isn't so. There are no restrictions, regulations, rules, or guidelines
about communicating with non-citizens/sites. None. No permits are needed,
no forms have to be filled out, no government offices have to be visited to
explain one's reasons for communicating with a non-citizen.

Just pick up the phone, or type a message in your computer, or whatever. We
citizens of the U.S. do it many times a day.

(There are two special cases, which hardly make Padgett's point: "Trading
with the Enemy Act" sorts of restrictions which limit commercial contacts
with Cuba, North Korea, and a few other countries. And the espionage laws.
That is, give nuclear weapons info to North Korean and you're in big
trouble. And there are various other kinds of minor rules, such as that no
citizen may engage in private diplomacy, bypassing the normal channels. I
don't believe these special cases are what Padgett could have meant when he
described the regulatory powers of government.]

--Tim May, who is even now communicating with foreigners without regulation

Boycott espionage-enabled software!
We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, we 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: 2^756839 - 1  | black markets, collapse of governments.
"National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

tcmay@got.net (Timothy C. May) writes:
> >> Gov does have the right (in fact the duty) to regulate communications
> >> between citizens and non-citizens/sites in other lands
> >
> >(not wishing to start a flamewar) Why do you think so ?
>
> It isn't so. There are no restrictions, regulations, rules, or guidelines
> about communicating with non-citizens/sites. None. No permits are needed,
> no forms have to be filled out, no government offices have to be visited to
> explain one's reasons for communicating with a non-citizen.
>
> Just pick up the phone, or type a message in your computer, or whatever. We
> citizens of the U.S. do it many times a day.
>...
[trading w/ the enemy act & espionage]

I strongly disagree.

Defense Trade Regulations, Section 120.10 - Export -- permanent and temporary.

 Export means:

 (4) Disclosing or transferring technical data to a foreign person, whether
 in the United States or abroad;

A foreign person is defined in S 120.11, and means anyone who's not a U.S.
citizen. Technical data is defined in S 120.33

 (d) Information, other than *software* as defined in 120.23(c), which is
 required for the design, development, ... maintenance or modification of
 defense articles. This includes, for example, information in the form of
 blueprints, drawings, photographs, plans, instructions and documentation.
 This also includes information that advances the state of the art of articles
 on the U.S. Munitions List. This definition does not include information
 concerning general scientific, mathematical or engineering principles
 commonly taught in schools, colleges and universities. It also does not
 include basic marketing information on function or purpose or general
 system description of desense articles.

And we all know that Part 121 - The United States Munitions List - has
Category XIII -- Auxiliary Military Equipment

 (b) Speech scramblers, privacy devices, cryptographic devices and software
 (encoding and decoding), and components specifically designed to be modofied
 therefore, ancillary equipment, and protective apparatus specifically
 designed or modofied for such devices, components, and equipment.

As I read it, a college professor might get busted for explaining his own new
crypto research to a class where some students happen not to be U.S. citizens.

Of course we all know this already. Just some U.S. people prefer to ignore the
mote in their own eye and to fight censorship in exotic remote developing
countries. Do you remember how U.S. Gov't tried to prevent the publications of
research papers on zero-knowledge proofs?

---

Dr. Dimitri Vulis
Brighton Beach Boardwalk BBS, Forest Hills, N.Y.: +1-718-261-2013, 14.4Kbps

On Sun, 11 Feb 1996, Dr. Dimitri Vulis wrote:

>  Export means:
> 
>  (4) Disclosing or transferring technical data to a foreign person, whether
>  in the United States or abroad;
> 
> A foreign person is defined in S 120.11, and means anyone who's not a U.S.
> citizen. Technical data is defined in S 120.33

Oh?  You mean that I can get busted for giving my Canadian spouse a copy 
of PGP?
--
Ed Carp, N7EKG    			Ed.Carp@linux.org, ecarp@netcom.com
					214/993-3935 voicemail/digital pager
					800/558-3408 SkyPager
Finger ecarp@netcom.com for PGP 2.5 public key		an88744@anon.penet.fi

"Past the wounds of childhood, past the fallen dreams and the broken families,
through the hurt and the loss and the agony only the night ever hears, is a
waiting soul.  Patient, permanent, abundant, it opens its infinite heart and
asks only one thing of you ... 'Remember who it is you really are.'"

                    -- "Losing Your Mind", Karen Alexander and Rick Boyes

The mark of a good conspiracy theory is its untestability.
		    -- Andrew Spring

Ed Carp <erc@dal1820.computek.net> writes:
> On Sun, 11 Feb 1996, Dr. Dimitri Vulis wrote:
>
> >  Export means:
> >
> >  (4) Disclosing or transferring technical data to a foreign person, whether
> >  in the United States or abroad;
> >
> > A foreign person is defined in S 120.11, and means anyone who's not a U.S.
> > citizen. Technical data is defined in S 120.33
>
> Oh?  You mean that I can get busted for giving my Canadian spouse a copy
> of PGP?

Well, I'm not a lawyer. ;-) S 120.11 (Foreign person) goes like this:

 Foreign person means any natural person who is not a "citizen or intending
 citizen" of the United States within the meaning of 8 U.S.Code 1324 b(a)(3).
 It also means any foreign corporation... The term "intending citizen" means a
 person who has been lawfully admitted to the United States for permanent
 residence (and maintains such residence) under the Immigration and
 Naturalization Act (8 U.S.Code 101(a), 1101(a), 60 Stat. 163).

I don't have 8 U.S.Code here (I'm not a lawyer :-), but the "indenting citizen"
bit sounds to me like the INS form which affirms that one intends to stay here
permanently, and to become U.S. citizen once eligible, which those immigrants
who haven't been in the U.S. long enough to apply for citizenship are asked to
show when they apply for certain jobs, like the NYC Board of Ed.

So -- I think that if the climate in the U.S. reverts to what it was in the
'50's, a zelous prosecutor might tell a grand jury that you gave munitions to a
"forriner", and you might be indicted, and the onus would be on you to prove
that your wife was an "intending citizen".

All this smacks of Nazism.

P.S. Last time I taught an undergraduate computer security course, my floppy
disk handouts contained, inter alia, PGP, and I didn't ask which students were
U.S. citizens.

---

Dr. Dimitri Vulis
Brighton Beach Boardwalk BBS, Forest Hills, N.Y.: +1-718-261-2013, 14.4Kbps