🚀 go-pugleaf

Ed Hamrick says that once the cat is out of the bag, publicly available
information is freely exportable.

I find this both troubling and inconsistent with what I know.

It's troubling because it would permit any old provocateur to post
restricted information on a bulletin board and then have it claimed
that it was then exportable. Given the international nature of
such bulletin boards, the provocateur could be someone outside
the U.S. and thus beyond the reach of the law himself. That
would vitiate elementary safeguards for those protections
we might agree are legitimate.

This isn't theoretical, of course--we've just seen a couple of worked
examples here in the past couple of days.

It's also inconsistent with what I know, since though DES may
be published, it's still not freely exportable. Ask any large
company, with adequate in-house legal staffs, who publishes DES.

A couple of examples:
Lotus Notes, which uses RSA, is not exportable though it may be bought
at many software stores, as far as I know.

RSA has to sell special versions of its software with restricted
key lengths overseas.

Perhaps the discussion can be thought of as three separate issues:

1. What are the responsibilities of the publisher?

2. Who is responsible for enforcement of the export regulations?

3. When is a violation committed?

It may be (WARNING--SPECULATION AHEAD) that the publisher's
responsibility is limited to warning notices.

It may be that enforcement is the responsibility of the government,
and thus physical obstacles to violation of the law aren't required
to be created by the publisher.

It may be that the violation is committed not by publishing,
nor selling, but by the person who takes the material out of the
country in violation of the law, where there are such prohibitions.

If this is accurate, then it raises some very troubling issues,
since foreigners who violate such laws on their way out may be
beyond the reach of the law, unless we search everybody as they
leave the country--a remedy I'd recoil from. It also doesn't
provide any way to deal with the "provocateur" mentioned earlier
in this message.

Ah, the challenges of the information age!

It is just such issues that lead directly to the tensions between
free speech and access, and the government's responsibility to enforce
the laws passed by Congress.

In passing, a word to those who may not fully understand the U.S.
system. The export laws aren't the result of some anti-democratic
Administration, but the result of laws passed by a democratically
elected Congress, after extensive public hearings and testimony.

Even the administration of the laws isn't monolithic. Many years ago
(in 1970-72) I worked for the U.S. Secretary of Commerce as his Deputy
Director of the Office of Policy Development, as part of a program
where private sector executives spent a year in the Government and
vice versa, called the Presidential Executive Interchange Program.
(Don't worry--conflict of interest scrutiny was close, continuing, and
extensive.) Export control policy and decisions were made by a
committee, consisting of the Secretaries of State, Defense, and
Commerce. This was not window-dressing--the committee, in the body of
its principals, met weekly. The Secretary of Commerce was the
Chairman, and took very vigorous pro-openness positions. It took the
strongest arguments, with evidence, from the Secretary of State or
Defense to impose controls.

Let's pursue this discussion in a collegial, not an adversarial way.

David

-- 
David Sternlight
RIPEM Public Key on server  --  Consider it an envelope for your e-mail