Snuffle Destroys United States: Film at 11

John Gilmore <gnu@toad.com> writes:

 > Today the Government filed a 22-page brief arguing to the
 > 9th Circuit Court that it would be so injurious to the
 > national security for Prof. Bernstein to be able to publish
 > his Snuffle 5.0 software on the Internet, that a complete
 > stay of Judge Patel's injunction is needed.

 > The brief is accompanied by two seven-page personal
 > declarations, one from William P. Crowell, Deputy Director
 > of NSA, and one from William A. Reinsch, Under Secretary for
 > Export Administration.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought "Snuffle" was some
simple-minded cipher designed to test ITAR.  I didn't think it
was something anyone would choose to incorporate into a serious
product.

--
     Mike Duvos         $    PGP 2.6 Public Key available     $
     enoch@zipcon.com   $    via Finger                       $
         {Free Cypherpunk Political Prisoner Jim Bell}

Mike Duvos writes:
 
: Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought "Snuffle" was some
: simple-minded cipher designed to test ITAR.  I didn't think it
: was something anyone would choose to incorporate into a serious
: product.
 
I am quite sure that you are wrong in this.  It is a serious program
written to demonstrate Bernstein's algorithm for converting a secure
hash function (which as it happens is exportable) into an encryption
program (which is not exportable).  It certainly was not written to
test the ITAR and restricting it under the ITAR or the EAR was and is
rather odd as it contains no encryption code itself.  Or, at least,
that is my understanding.

--
Peter D. Junger--Case Western Reserve University Law School--Cleveland, OH
 EMAIL: junger@samsara.law.cwru.edu    URL:  http://samsara.law.cwru.edu   
     NOTE: junger@pdj2-ra.f-remote.cwru.edu no longer exists