Re: New crypto regulations

At 09:57 AM 12/30/96 -0800, Hal Finney wrote:
>The regs, as Lucky pointed out, do hint at restrictions on OCR fonts in
>the future.  However this is obviously doomed since as OCR technology
>advances the distinction between OCR and non-OCR fonts will vanish.
>I imagine that a special purpose character recognition engine could be
>built to work on any known, monospaced font, as is typically used for
>source code.

It seems to me that the authors of the regulations have come to the same
conclusion. Which is why the ban on scannable text is not in the current
version of the regs. But the regulators want to see scannable source banned
that much is clear. At the same time, they do not want to run up against
the wide ranging protections printed speech enjoys.

I expect the solution ultimately employed to use a method similar to what
is currently used in color copiers and digital audio mastering equipment.
Normal color copiers will copy just about all colors except the particular
shade of green used in US currency. Consumer digital audio recording
equipment makes use of copy protection features. Only hideously expensive
"professional" equipment has the copy protection turned off.

We might see something similar for printed source and OCR programs. Printed
source will have to be printed in a specific font. A font that OCR programs
are required to not recognize. OCR programs that do recognize this specific
font will of course be export controlled.



-- Lucky Green <mailto:shamrock@netcom.com> PGP encrypted mail preferred
   Make your mark in the history of mathematics. Use the spare cycles of
   your PC/PPC/UNIX box to help find a new prime.
   http://www.mersenne.org/prime.htm

At 12:07 PM -0800 12/30/96, Lucky Green wrote:

>I expect the solution ultimately employed to use a method similar to what
>is currently used in color copiers and digital audio mastering equipment.
>Normal color copiers will copy just about all colors except the particular
>shade of green used in US currency. Consumer digital audio recording
>equipment makes use of copy protection features. Only hideously expensive
>"professional" equipment has the copy protection turned off.
>
>We might see something similar for printed source and OCR programs. Printed
>source will have to be printed in a specific font. A font that OCR programs
>are required to not recognize. OCR programs that do recognize this specific
>font will of course be export controlled.

I doubt this. This would be too absurd even for the feds...a special font
to be used in books?

As I said, hand-entry of text and code is already very cheap....and any
code fragments desired to be exported can be trivially taken out in any of
the zillions of floppies and disks crossing the borders each day, or the
Net of course (stego, hidden, remailed, whatever).

The whole book thing is an oddity...no meaningful crypto is going to be
helped or hindered by the book exception.

What _could_ conceivably happen is that export of some code fragment could
be given plausible deniability that an export violation occurred by having
a paper version distributed widely. "Honest...we didn't send PGP 3.0 to
Europe! Someone must've OCRed or manually typed in the code we published in
"PGP 3--The Text.""

This strategem would work even if the feds mandated some special
non-OCRable font (which I doubt could exist...if humans can read the font,
so can trainable OCR programs, which of course don't rely on having
libraries of particular fonts).

--Tim May


--Tim May


Just say "No" to "Big Brother Inside"
We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, I 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: 2^1398269     | black markets, collapse of governments.
"National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

Mr. May said:
> At 12:07 PM -0800 12/30/96, Lucky Green wrote:
> Net of course (stego, hidden, remailed, whatever).
> 
> The whole book thing is an oddity...no meaningful crypto is going to be
> helped or hindered by the book exception.

     I disagree. The thing about exporting crypto code in book for is that 
it allows budding anarc^h^h^h^h^h cryptographers and crypto-programmers
specific examples of algorythm implementation. 

     It allows people outside the US to learn about and write good crypto.

     I, for one, don't care _where_ the code gets written, as long as I can
get it, and use it. France, Libya, Russia, or Albania, it doesn't matter
WHERE the keyboard is, with the internet it is all 30 or 40 hops away.

     Of course, that is the problem. Soon we will see the banning of 
IMPORT of strong crypto. 

     These people are either very stupid, or very bright. Either way, they
are not on friendly terms with freedom.

Petro, Christopher C.
petro@suba.com <prefered for any non-list stuff>
snow@smoke.suba.com