1994-06-15 - Massive ITAR Violation!

Header Data

From: catalyst-remailer@netcom.com
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Message Hash: c5c959f9d529dd72703c4be00c9a46ddd344ac346acc79cc98a184adac47eb11
Message ID: <199406150348.UAA18177@mail2.netcom.com>
Reply To: N/A
UTC Datetime: 1994-06-15 03:48:45 UTC
Raw Date: Tue, 14 Jun 94 20:48:45 PDT

Raw message

From: catalyst-remailer@netcom.com
Date: Tue, 14 Jun 94 20:48:45 PDT
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Massive ITAR Violation!
Message-ID: <199406150348.UAA18177@mail2.netcom.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


I mailed this about 5 minutes before the news of list death arrived, so
it didn't make it. Conspiracy! Anyway, I posted this to comp.org.eff.talk
and so far it has generated no interest.

The Cypherpunks have been mentioned in various articles in the mass media
as a group that would at least toy with the idea of civil disobedience
concerning ITAR violation. Imagine yourselves trying to topple ITAR
by publically exporting PGP to many countries, every day, for over a
year. Yet do any of us really want to push our luck this way? Phil
Zimmermann is out a lot of cash paying for a legal team. He can hardly
afford taking his family out for dinner.

That's why discovering this, I feel it should make *news*. As it turns
out, the internet's largest Macintosh ftp archive has been exporting
MacPGP2.2 every day for the last year! This to Singapore and China and
God knows where else. Every country on Earth with an internet connection,
likely.

Here is a satirical essay, explaining what anyone who takes ITAR at
face value might do if they discovered this situation....

-----BEGIN ROT13 SIGNED MESSAGE-----

Fellow citizens of the United States of America, I wish to inform you of a
great and ongoing catastrophe of most serious consequence.

It is organized crime, by definition. Below is the header for the MacPGP2.2
file on sumex-aim.stanford.edu, archived with dozens of other utilities, as
/info-mac/util/pgp.hqx, which has been there for *over a year*, many times
a week being *exported* onto info-mac mirrors around the world. This is the
most massive and organized absolute violation of the USA's ITAR munitions
export laws (regulations) we have ever witnessed. For an entire year,
weekly if not daily, the notorious encryptor PGP, right under our eyes,
exported!

I hope this is cleared up as soon as humanly possible, but we are all of us
left with the guilt of not having noticed this before. All this talk of
ITAR and there you are, your largest communal Mac ftp site pumping out PGP
across the border like a huge demonic machine bent on destroying our
beloved society. If the moderators cannot be contacted immediately, I
suggest military force be used. Or cooperative shutdown of the US internet
connections. Please begin this at once, as it *must* be stressed that PGP
is classified as a MUNITION, right along with rocket launchers and
tanks!!!!!!!! This is as serious as it gets.

I didn't even know what the internet *was* back in April of '93, and I am
but one in a million (literally) who has access to sumex-aim.stanford.edu
and all its mirror sites. It must have been my destiny to save the world,
for none of *you* seem interested in doing so. It has only been an hour
since I discovered this NATIONAL SECURITY DISASTER, and I immediately
set myself in action to save my country from destruction.

*I*YoU*mE*We*OiwIE*wE*yOU*Me*I*

P.S. Here is the evidence:

>From: macmod@SUMEX-AIM.Stanford.EDU (Info-Mac Moderator)
>Date: Sun, 25 Apr 1993 23:22:58 PDT
>
>PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) ver 2.2 - RSA public-key encryption freeware
>for MSDOS, protects E-mail.  Lets you communicate securely with people
>you've never met, with no secure channels needed for prior exchange of
>keys.  Well featured and fast!  Excellent user documentation.
>
>PGP has sophisticated key management, an RSA/conventional hybrid
>encryption scheme, message digests for digital signatures, data
>compression before encryption, and good ergonomic design.  Source
>code is free.
>
>Keywords:   PGP, Pretty Good Privacy, RSA, public key, encryption,
>            privacy, authentication, signatures, email
>
>(This file must be converted with BinHex 4.0)
>
>:$8eKBe"(8$)Z-LjcC@%!39"36'&eFh3J!!!$@3X!!%DFIea6593K!!%!!eN,FNa
....

And upon downloading it and starting it up, the console window faithfully
displays:

>Pretty Good Privacy 2.2 - Public-key encryption for the masses.
>(c) 1990-1993 Philip Zimmermann, Phil's Pretty Good Software. 6 Mar 93
>Date: 1994/06/12 16:10 GMT

I further suggest that all of the following sites (but a sample)
immediately remove this file from their archives and stop mirroring
sumex-aim till they too remove the file.

To keep this from happening again, I suggest *all of us* in the USA delete
our copies of PGP from our hard disks, lest our children export it into the
hands of such enemy nations as these. It is time we put an end to this
scourge, for look what will happen if we do not. Pornographers and
terrorists are coming for our children if we do not act. Death to PGP
users!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Where is our government in all of this? Our tax
dollars are not being used to protect us from the EXPORT OF MUNITIONS TO
ENEMY NATIONS!!!!!

I suggest full prosecution of all users and maintainers of sumex-aim, as
they have all obviously conspired to maintain this treachery. I suggest
they all be searched for other weapons as well including land mines,
automatic machine guns, poison gases, biological weaponry and mind control
devices of all sorts, as it is my firm belief that the only reason they are
interested in PGP is to forward their agenda to export other munitions,
drugs pushed on *our* children to pay for them!!! This will culminate in
the obvious acquisition of *nuclear bombs* by every Tom Dick and Harry
gangster. Little boys and girls in the getto with *neutron bombs* and
*poison gas missiles*! I shutter to think we could have stopped it but,
alas, we may have failed ourselves. Here are the target sites. I suggest
immediate offensive attacks to destroy these evil ports of death and
destruction....

Australia (Melbourne): archie.au//micros/mac/info-mac/util/pgp.hqx

Austria (Vienna): ftp.univie.ac.at//mac/info-mac/util/pgp.hqx

Canada (Vancouver): ftp.ucs.ubc.ca//pub/mac/info-mac/util/pgp.hqx

Finland (Espoo): ftp.funet.fi// pub/mac/info-mac/util/pgp.hqx

Finland (Jyvaskyla): ftp.jyu.fi//info-mac/util/MacPGP2.2.sea

Germany (Hannover): ftp.rrzn.uni-hannover.de//pub/info-mac/util/pgp.hqx

Japan (Tokyo): ftp.center.osaka-u.ac.jp//info-mac/util/pgp.hqx

Japan (Tokyo): ftp.iij.ad.jp//pub/info-mac/util/pgp.hqx

Japan (Tokyo): ftp.u-tokyo.ac.jp//pub/info-mac/util/pgp.hqx

Netherlands (Wageningen): ftp.fenk.wau.nl//pub/mac/info-mac/util/pgp.hqx

Republic of Singapore (Singapore): ftp.nus.sg//pub/mac/util/pgp.hqx

Sweden (Lund): ftp.lth.se//mac/info-mac/util/pgp.hqx.Z

Sweden (Uppsala): ftp.sunet.se//pub/mac/info-mac/util/pgp.hqx

Switzerland (Zurich): nic.switch.ch//mirror/info-mac/util/pgp.hqx

Taiwan (Hsinchu): ftp.edu.tw//Macintosh/info-mac/util/pgp.hqx

UK (London): src.doc.ic.ac.uk//packages/info-mac/util/pgp.hqx.gz

-----END ROT13 SIGNED MESSAGE-----

-----BEGIN ROT13 SIGNATURE-----
Whar fvkgu avargrra uhaqerq avargl sbhe. Sbhegubhfnaqgra punenpgref va
frirauhaqerqrvtuglrvtug jbeqf bs baruhaqerq yvarf.
-----END ROT13 SIGNATURE-----





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