🚀 go-pugleaf

David Sternlight (strnlght@netcom.com) wrote:
: I said that government takes cryptographic violations of munitions
: laws much more seriously than the building of airplane models.
: 
: Steve Gardner's response that nobody is harmed by cryptography is
: appalling. Consider the lives lost or saved through cryptographic
: activities during wars, anti-terrorism, drug enforcement, etc.

Well, we should rather avoid wars than avoiding use of cryptography.
Or would you prohibit the export of screws and nails?  Screws are surely
essential in building tanks, but the technology for manufacturing screws
is of course known outside of the U.S.

Isn't that equally the case with cryptography?  The algorithms and ideas
behind RSA, DES, MD5, etc. are known in europe, russia and - no doubt - iraq.
And all over the world there are programmers, who can implement RSA.  So why
should your government bother about letting americans export cryptographic
software?

joerg

--
Joerg Czeranski
Osteroeder Strasse 55          EMail injc@sun.rz.tu-clausthal.de
W-3392 Clausthal-Zellerfeld    SMTP  injc@[139.174.1.3]
Germany

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