Re: your mail
Gregory S. Youngblood (zeta@infinicom.com)
Mon, 25 Nov 1996 22:32:04 -0500
At 09:05 PM 11/25/96 -0500, Nathan Bryant wrote:
>
>> Todd T. Fries wrote:
>>
>> > Perhaps someone could browse to http://www.openbsd.org and see if their
>> > suggestion of going through Canada are valid?
>
>For people who don't know, he's referring to a scheme where someone in the
>U.S. would export cryptography software to someone in Canada, who would
>then turn around and re-export the software to the rest of the world.
>
>This won't work; a U.S. resident who exports crypto to Canada with the
>intention of having someone in Canada re-export the software WILL be
>prosecutable in the U.S. Big Brother is watching!
>
>For any cryptography to be integrated into the mainline Linux kernel, the
>cryptography will have to be implemented outside the U.S., and the kernel
>will have to be maintained from outsided the U.S. Unless the cryptography
>is usable only for authentication. Additionally, once crypto gets into the
>mainline kernel, the kernel will not be re-exportable from the U.S.
>
Now here's an interesting question.. at first I was going to suggest that
since modules work so nicely an encryption module could be created and
maintained from outside the U. S., which could be loaded using the module
utilities. But, that got me to thinking about some older discussions on
cryptography export.
Isn't it illegal to export cryptography or software with hooks for
cryptography or that cryptography was easily added. I forget the exact
workings of it, but it seems that under certain situations even just the
hooks to allow cryptography to be added was also against export. If that is
the case, where does that put the linux kernel with modules??
Just a thought.. hopefully I'm wrong!!