From: jf_avon@citenet.net (Jean-Francois Avon (JFA Technologies, QC, Canada))
Date: Tue, 30 Jan 1996 04:50:34 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: more RANTING about NSA-friendly cpunks
Message-ID: <9601291935.AA19726@cti02.citenet.net>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


"Vladimir Z. Nuri" <vznuri@netcom.com> said:

<much snipped text all over the place>

>my point is that, what is anyone's evidence that what happened to 
>Zimmermann (i.e. NOTHING WHATSOEVER other than an investigation that
>ended with NOTHING) would not happen to whoever tried to "export"
>whatever algorithms they pleased???

>if people are going to pretend that the ITAR crypto sections have
>TEETH, then please
>give a disclaimer that YOU HAVE NO EVIDENCE. I have no problem with
>people getting "paler shades of white" from all their imagined bogeymen.


>Zimmermann SHOWS that any claim that the ITAR has "teeth" APPEARS TO
>BE GROUNDLESS.

>you can argue all you want about HYPOTHETICAL situations, but the
>REALITY is that nobody has ever gotten any nastiness from any
>ITAR-crypto prosecution. 

>if cpunks want excuses to cower in terror of the ITAR (such as e.g.
>TCM seems to advocate), you will find endless  justification from
>your rampant fantasies.

I do not think that wether PZ or anybody else was prosecuted in *this* case means that ITAR does not have teeths.  The most important thing in order to understand a situation is to put yourself in the other guy's shoes.  If I would have been in the govt shoes, maybe I would have let down the case too.  It does not mean that I wouldn't attempt any case like this anymore...  Theses peoples are not stupid.  They might be statists, but they are intelligent statists...

PZ case could have been presented as borderline, and could have made a precedent not in their advantage.

Non-objectivity of a law never prevented the govt to "enforce" it.

JFA
Power tends to corrupt, absolute power corrupts absolutely.