From: Stone Monkey <sm@nym.alias.net>
Date: Sat, 12 Jul 1997 17:00:04 +0800
To: cypherpunks@Algebra.COM
Subject: Re: FYI: NSA Requests Source Code From Elvis+
Message-ID: <19970712085043.11461.qmail@nym.alias.net>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



In article <9707071618.AA63188@public.uni-hamburg.de> Ulf Mueller writes:
>> The National Security Agency has asked Sun Microsystems Inc. and Elvis+,
>> the Russian networking company in which Sun has a 10 percent stake, to
>> turn over the source code of its SunScreen SKIP E+.
>
>Why should the US government get access to the source code of foreign
>product being imported to the US?

To me the announcement implied that the NSA wanted to compare Sun's
and Elvis+'s implementations, to verify that they are actually different.
To check that Sun didn't simply smuggle the code out and launder it 
through Elvis+. They're not looking at imports (why would Elvis+'s
code be imported? It's already available domestically from Sun), they're
looking at Sun's well-publicised end-run around the crypto chilling
effect, to see if Sun perhaps cut any corners.

But it's more fun to rant about the paranoid thrashings of a government
bogeyman than it is to attempt to understand the actions of the NSA,
which is not staffed by stupid people.