From: Toto <toto@sk.sympatico.ca>
Date: Mon, 7 Apr 1997 17:17:49 -0700 (PDT)
To: Greg Broiles <gbroiles@netbox.com>
Subject: Re: Wassenaar Arrangement now available
In-Reply-To: <3.0.1.32.19970405184302.008065a0@mail.io.com>
Message-ID: <33498603.AFC@sk.sympatico.ca>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


Greg Broiles wrote:
> In early March, I filed a FOIA request with the Arms Control & Disarmament
> Agency, a division of the Department of State, for a copy of the Wassenaar
> Arrangement, a multinational agreement which is intended to regulate and
> coordinate the regulation of military and "dual-use" items. (Cryptographic
> software and hardware is often considered a "dual-use" item.)
> 
> I received a copy of the Arrangement last week, and have converted it to
> HTML. It is available on the web at
> 
> <http://www.parrhesia.com/wassenaar/>, or
> <https://www.parrhesia.com/wassenaar/> for the security-conscious.
> 
> The document itself does not refer to cryptography or cryptographic
> software/hardware. The last page of the document - the "Munitions List" was
> blank; but the document was marked "released in full". I'm going to compare
> what I've got with the various pieces of the Arrangement which have been
> released through other sources to see if I need to make a supplemental
> request for more information.

  The disparity between various informational 'releases' of 
information surrounding the Wassenaar Agreement points to the
real intentions of those involved, which is to regulate the
availability to strong crypto not so much through legislation,
as through uncertainty surrounding legal issues which can result
in severe penalties to those who might chance to cross ill-defined
legal lines.
  In a previous post, I mentioned a law enforcement official who
responded to my question about one of the finer points of the law
with the reply, "I'm not paid to 'know' the law, I'm paid to
'enforce' it."
  i.e. No matter what action you perform, the interpretation that
the government uses to fuck you in the ass will take an opposite
position on the matter.

  I have seen back-to-back cases in the same courtroom, with the
same judge, where government prosecutors argued diametrically
opposed positions in order to convict the accused.
  The result? Two convictions.
-- 
Toto
"The Xenix Chainsaw Massacre"
http://bureau42.base.org/public/xenix/xenbody.html