🚀 go-pugleaf

Just HOW is the government going to enforce export controls on machine
readable information?

Suppose I hop on a flight to London carrying a floppy disk. On this disk is
the source to a DES program (substitute your favorite public-domain but
"controlled" information here). However, reading it yields gibberish because
I've encrypted it with a one-time-pad. The key disk is back home in a safe
place (encrypted with a strong conventional cipher so the Feds can't read it
should they raid my place). I won't take it across until the one I'm
currently carrying makes it over safely.

In such a situation, is it up to me to prove that the disk I'm carrying
DOESN'T carry "controlled" information?  Considering that lots of data must
cross the Atlantic in many forms I can't imagine that Customs could demand
to know the contents of every disk, tape or telephone call, for that matter.

I would think that our government would take a lesson from the Communist
countries and realize that "controlling" the flow of public information is
impossible outside of a police state.  The widespread ownership of personal
computers by an informed public can represent a powerful safeguard against
arbitrary government interference with personal communications; that's why
the Soviet Union is scared to death of them.

Phil