From: frantz@netcom.com (Bill Frantz)
Date: Wed, 1 May 1996 18:14:54 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: ITARs and the Export of Classes and Methods
Message-ID: <199605010642.XAA05623@netcom9.netcom.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


At 11:49 AM 4/30/96 -0700, Timothy C. May wrote:
>An interesting situation for the ITARs, if they try to restrict bignum
>classes, for example. A class-based system, if done correctly (in whatever
>language, e.g., C++ or Java), should have _most_ of the hard crypto work
>already implemented in classes and methods (for bignums, modular
>exponentiation, etc.), with the final crypto program much more easily
>implemented and exported.

Certain languages, e.g. Smalltalk, and I believe lisp and scheme, have
bignums as a built-in type.  (Or more specifically, their integer types are
limited in size only by available memory.)  I believe these languages are
freely exportable.

Your problem stays here in the good ol' USA.  You can't implement RSA
directly in these languages (I assume RSA in perl has the same problem),
because of the patent restrictions.  Yet another reason to buy a T-shirt.

Regards - Bill


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