From: ssteele@eff.org (Shari Steele)
Date: Wed, 1 Feb 95 07:38:08 PST
To: merriman@metronet.com
Subject: your membership renewal letter
Message-ID: <199502011537.KAA27134@eff.org>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


February 1, 1995

Dear David,

We received your response to our membership renewal reminder and would like
to thank you for taking the time to actually write a letter explaining why
you have chosen not to renew.  We are sorry that you are unhappy with the
role EFF played in the Digital Telephony negotiations.  We were not totally
comfortable our role, but we do believe we did the right thing and that
there would be a much more intrusive bill if EFF had done nothing.

However, I'm sure that you've heard the arguments by now, and I'm not
writing to change your mind about our role in Digital Telephony but,
instead, to let you know about a lawsuit we're about to file against the
State Department and others claiming the ITAR listing of encryption as a
munition is unconstitutional.  Our plaintiff wanted to post an encryption
algorithm he developed to sci.crypt.  The State Department informed him
that he would need an export license before he could post the algorithm on
the Net and then told him that he would be denied the license because the
algorithm was too strong.  We see this as a critical First Amendment
challenge to a regulation that undermines secure communications on the
networks.  The suit should be filed before the end of the month.

We don't expect to please all of the people all of the time, and it is
clear that we didn't please you with Digital Telephony.  But we really are
trying to make Cyberspace a better place to be, and we hope you'll
reconsider your decision regarding your renewal.  You can earmark your
contribution to be applied only to litigation or some other particular
function, if that would make you feel more comfortable.

Take care.

Sincerely,
Shari

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Shari Steele, Director of Legal Services                ssteele@eff.org
Electronic Frontier Foundation                 202/861-7700 (voice)
1667 K Street, N.W., Suite 801                    202/861-1258 (fax)
Washington, DC  20006-1605                    202/861-1224 (BBS)