From: Benjamin Grosman <bgrosman@healey.com.au>
Date: Fri, 8 Nov 1996 20:04:45 -0800 (PST)
To: "William H. Geiger III" <whgiii@amaranth.com>
Subject: Re: Legal Deffinition of Encryption?
Message-ID: <2.2.32.19961109040141.00956568@healey.com.au>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


Dear Sir,

>Is there any law(s) that actully define encryption?
>
>At it's very basics encryption is taking a group of 1's & 0's converting
them into a different group of 1's & 0's and providing a mecanisim to change
them back to the original group of 1's & 0's.
>
>>From a legal standpoitnt how is PGP any different than PKZIP? How does the
law make a diference between an "encryption" program and a "compression"
program other than the fact that the encryption program is advertized as
encryption and the compression program is advertized as compression?

I have absolutely no idea: this is a very interesting problem. Not for just
compression and encryption differention legally, but also, well, ANY other
data form. If one defines a new format for saving data (i.e a new image
format), and then exports this technology from the USA, is this exportation
of munitions due to it's unknown qualities? Or what? 
I know that in Australia there have been problems defining electronic data,
especially pictures (usually porn), for the purposes of prosecution.
Because, really, a pornographic picture is no more than 1's and 0's arranged
in a different way by a different algorithm. 
Thus I think it most likely that the law would try and approach it from the
direction of the algorithm that saved the data and the intent with which the
algorithm was written.
Otherwise, I don't know.

Yours Sincerely,

Benjamin Grosman