From: solman@MIT.EDU
Date: Thu, 21 Jul 94 13:46:58 PDT
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: No more Cantwell amendment? was Re: Clipper Chip retreat
In-Reply-To: <9407211837.AA10414@ua.MIT.EDU>
Message-ID: <9407212046.AA11440@ua.MIT.EDU>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


> You wrote:
> 
> | So does anybody actually know of a case in which the government attempted
> | to jail somebody for knowingly transmitting cryptographic programs from the
> | US?

> 	There was a case where someone was jailed for shipping cable
> boxes that do DES out of the US; they didn't know it was illegal &
> went to jail.  They were in Florida, 1991 or so.

I'm not concerned with physical equiptment. Clearly the government has the
authority to regulate the export of physical items under munitions laws.
But I don't think they should be (or can be under the first amendment)
allowed to regulate the flow of information, whether it be via nets or
paper. I would suggest that this distinction is why the US is allowing the
export of applied cryptography, but not applied cryptography disks. Even if
the government believes that distribution of the book is harmful to national
security, they clearly can't regulate the expression of ideas on paper.

Now most of us have come to think of email as something in between paper
and phone calls, but there is no legal precedent (To my knowledge). So I
suppose the government could make that argument and defend it. But its
really hard for me to imagine the government cracking down on somebody for
posting source code via the internet. I'll test that when I'm ready for
alpha though. Anybody know a constitutional lawyer interested in taking
on a precedent setting case pro bono? :-/

JWS