🚀 go-pugleaf

Simson L. Garfinkel writes
> > > Did FEE encription make it into the 3.0 Mail.app?
> > No.
> > Due to restrictions on export of encryption software,
> > NeXT would not have been allowed to sell the software
> > outside the United States.  Why the chose not to release
> > both an international version and a domestic version, I
> > don't know. [see fall issue of NeXTWORLD pg. 31]
> > 
> Because that wouldn't work with NeXT's global strategy.
> Imagine if you someone had sent encrypted mail from your
> chicago office to your pittsburgh office, but you were in
> france.  then you couldn't read it on your NeXT machine in
> france, because it wouldn't have the encryption software,
> even if you have NFS mounted your home directory from pittsburgh.
> 

Fine and dandy, except that the exact same problem also applies to  
regular plain-vanilla, non-encrypted NeXTMail.  If you don't know  
that the other person is receiving mail on a NeXT, you can't send  
NeXTMail.  Further, even if they are, you may not be able to reliably  
send NeXTMail because some gateways trash NeXTMail completely.

The bottom line is you need to know exactly what the recipient can or  
cannot receive.  I don't see how knowing whether they can receive  
encrypted mail would make that any harder.  Besides, I imagine that  
one doesn't send encrypted mail to everybody; more likely, its sent  
to people you know well, so that you're likely to know whether they  
can get encrypted mail or not.

Yes, there are instances in which US users would themselves  
physically be abroad and therefore be unable to read their email sent  
encrypted to their US address (Simson's example).  But one could  
easily imagine doing an rlogin into a US machine, decrypting, and  
mailing off to the foreign machine.  Sure, the message is now in  
clear, but that's no worse than if you had no encryption in the first  
place.

--
-
Stefano Pagiola
Food Research Institute, Stanford University
spagiola@frinext.stanford.edu (NeXTMail encouraged)