From: jim bell <jimbell@pacifier.com>
Date: Fri, 3 May 1996 18:41:32 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: EET on PGP API Quash
Message-ID: <m0uFA0c-00094iC@pacifier.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


At 02:22 PM 5/2/96 -0700, Martin Minow wrote:
>>   ... the State Department is taking
>>   an increasingly hard line on PGP. Where once the State had
>>   restricted itself to warning developers against exporting
>>   source code with PGP file-encryption routines, it is now
>>   arguing that application programming interfaces (API)
>>   allowing PGP program insertion should be subject to control
>>   under arms-trading statutes.
>
>It would seem that any computer system that permits the use
>of an externally-supplied computer program (i.e., Windows,
>DOS, MacOS, Unix, Java, Microsoft Word macro languange) would
>fall under this restriction.
>
>I wonder how much thought went into this decision.

Not much.

I seem to recall a quote from Dorothy Denning a couple of months ago where 
she actually held out API's as a way to get around the ITAR restrictions.  
It sounds to me like even that was too much for them!

In any case, this position is very desperate.  Those of us who recall old 
Altair computers remember a time where even a "file" was a foreign concept.  
Files are, arguably, a standardized format on which encryption programs 
work.  Are they going to stop the export of MSDOS?

Jim Bell
jimbell@pacifier.comJim Bell
jimbell@pacifier.com