Encryption/data-changing in russia

Dear All,

whilst on the subject of PGP in Russia, I encountered something very
interesting. A friend of mine who is Russian, but lives out here, frequently
corresponds with friends in Russia via email, and in the course of sending
emai, they occasionally send an attachment. However, the attachment that
_all_ his russian friends send, including the ones who use MIME capable
email clients such as Eudora, always, _always_, uuencode files, and they say
they can't do MIME. I am wondering if the encryption/data-changing laws in
Russia are so strict as to disallow MIME encoding even, but still allows UU
for some reason?

Any clues as to this?

Yours Sincerely,

Benjamin Grosman

nuqneH,
> 
> whilst on the subject of PGP in Russia, I encountered something very
> interesting. A friend of mine who is Russian, but lives out here, frequently
> corresponds with friends in Russia via email, and in the course of sending
> emai, they occasionally send an attachment. However, the attachment that
> _all_ his russian friends send, including the ones who use MIME capable
> email clients such as Eudora, always, _always_, uuencode files, and they say
> they can't do MIME. I am wondering if the encryption/data-changing laws in
> Russia are so strict as to disallow MIME encoding even, but still allows UU
> for some reason?
> 
> Any clues as to this?
> 

1) We do not care about computer laws. At all.
2) We just do not like mime UUENCODE is ok to send files,and we (at least i)
consider MIME almost useless and annoying - MIMEish sendmails often encode 
russian text (8th bit set) just because they think it's kosher. I don't think
so and there are still many people with MIME-unaware readers who get highly
annoyed when they see mime crap instead of plain text. BTW i've seen only one
REALLY mime-aware MUA,the Pine,others (incl elm) often work with national
codesets.. hmm.. i can' say incorrectly but when it forgets to decode header of 
message..

-- 
                                       _     _  _  _  _      _  _
   {::} {::} {::}  CU in Hell          _| o |_ | | _|| |   / _||_|   |_ |_ |_
   (##) (##) (##)        /Arkan#iD    |_  o  _||_| _||_| /   _|  | o |_||_||_|
   [||] [||] [||]            Do i believe in Bible? Hell,man,i've seen one!

Benjamin Grosman wrote:
> 
> Dear All,
> 
> whilst on the subject of PGP in Russia, I encountered something very
> interesting. A friend of mine who is Russian, but lives out here, frequently
> corresponds with friends in Russia via email, and in the course of sending
> emai, they occasionally send an attachment. However, the attachment that
> _all_ his russian friends send, including the ones who use MIME capable
> email clients such as Eudora, always, _always_, uuencode files, and they say
> they can't do MIME. I am wondering if the encryption/data-changing laws in
> Russia are so strict as to disallow MIME encoding even, but still allows UU
> for some reason?

benjamin,

you do have a valid concern, but: 

who cares about these laws if no one enforces them?

russia is such a libertarian country now, all commerce is based on
private enforcement by mobs, the government is so corrupt that all
regulation is sort of auctioned to the highest bribe bidder, and the
government spending is only 13% of GDP because nobody pays taxes. in
economic reality this is actually good because the government is
very small and impotent, as long as it does not spend more than what
it makes.

nobody cares about encryption/shmencryption unless you are a spy.

i regularly send encrypted emails to my russian acquaintainces.

	- Igor.