Messages in this thread | | | From | "H. Peter Anvin" <> | Subject | Re: FW: Crypto | Date | 2 Aug 2000 17:06:34 -0700 |
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Followup to: <Pine.BSI.3.91.1000802184348.24897K-100000@spsystems.net> By author: Henry Spencer <henry@spsystems.net> In newsgroup: linux.dev.kernel > > >> FreeSWAN is complicated by the fact they want no US resident contributing. > >> That makes life kind of tricky > >Yes. I'm not sure if this is a healthy idea anymore, at least not with > >the last BXA concessions... > > Trouble is, those concessions are not Supreme Court decisions. They could > be reversed with one stroke of a bureaucrat's pen. (Remember that it's an > election year in the US.) It has happened -- four years ago, US rules on > exporting satellite technology were reasonable, but not any more, not since > Congress decided they could embarrass the President over it. > > If FreeS/WAN were to once start accepting US contributions, then making > its code base *verifiably*, *unquestionably* free of them again -- should > that become necessary -- would be extremely difficult. It's an all but > irrevocable step, requiring considerable trust in a government that has > historically been openly hostile to free crypto. >
First, do the Canadian regulations apply to U.S. law as it exists on the books, or it is U.S. law as it applied when the code was exported to Canada?
Second, it's quite unlikely (IMO) that these regulations will be reversed. Why? Because they were -- rather explicitly -- implemented in response to (a) liberalized regulations in the European Union (read: it was starting to hurt business) and (b) successful court challenges.
-hpa
-- <hpa@transmeta.com> at work, <hpa@zytor.com> in private! "Unix gives you enough rope to shoot yourself in the foot." http://www.zytor.com/~hpa/puzzle.txt
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