From: Adam Back <aba@dcs.ex.ac.uk>
Date: Sat, 31 May 1997 17:02:10 +0800
To: cypherpunks@cyberpass.net
Subject: legal EAR work-around/Paper based remailers
Message-ID: <199705310853.JAA00659@server.test.net>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



EAR says that you can't export crypto in electronic form.  EAR says
you can export crypto in textual form.  We have electronic cash in
terms of MT banks digicash.  Email is more convenient for exporting
crypto source code and binaries that snail mail.

Let's do it.

Here's what we need:

1. US entrepreneur to accept mail with 

	::
	Snail-To: <street address (outside US)>
	Snail-Fee: <Fee + 2c/sheet + postage stamp charge, digicash>
	Scanning-Fee: <50c/sheet, digicash>
	Request-Remailing-To: <cypherpunks@cyberpass.net>
	Anon-Post-To: alt.cypherpunks

   US volunteer strips off first two headers, prints out the document
   in a large OCR friendly font.  Puts in envelope and posts at
   highest priority snail that can be paid for out of the included
   postage (overnight/air-mail/slow-boat).

2. Non-US entrepreneur to scan and remail results

	::
	Scanning-Fee: <50c/sheet, digicash>
	Request-Remailing-To: <cypherpunks@toad.com>
	Anon-Post-To: alt.cypherpunks

   US volunteer scans the sheets, mails/post them to the requested
   email address/newsgroup, and collects his digicash fee per sheet.

I volunteer for #2.  (You understand the importance of the
Scanning-Fee, I can pay someone to feed sheets into a scanner if needs
be with a fee, without that I can become overloaded with a ream of
paper representing the binary for PGP5.0).

Legal questions: I'd be interested in legal interpretations of whether
the above scheme is legal for the US entrepreneur.  Peter Junger said
a short while ago on the list that printed material could be exported
under the EAR regulations administered by Commerce Dept.  Does this
scheme qualify?

Technical questions: If this is to include uuencoded or radix-64 mime
encoding, we might want to think about redundancy to allow error
correction.  Perhaps we want that anyway to ensure that what we have
is 100% character-by-character perfect.  Or perhaps not as it may
damage the legality aspects.  They may start saying that you can only
export human readable stuff on paper, etc.  Then we move on to `texto'
apparently human readable steganographically encoded paper based
remailer messages.

Adam
-- 
Have *you* exported RSA today? --> http://www.dcs.ex.ac.uk/~aba/rsa/

print pack"C*",split/\D+/,`echo "16iII*o\U@{$/=$z;[(pop,pop,unpack"H*",<>
)]}\EsMsKsN0[lN*1lK[d2%Sa2/d0<X+d*lMLa^*lN%0]dsXx++lMlN/dsM0<J]dsJxp"|dc`