For the last three years, I've operated a mail alias, "[EMAIL PROTECTED]", that publicly archives and forwards to the government authorities announcements of the public availability of cryptographic software. The idea was that since current US export regulations require notifying the government any time such software is made available, it might be useful to have a mechanism that lets the rest of us know at the same time. It was started on a whim, at the suggestion of someone on this list, if I recall correctly.
The alias forwards messages sent to it to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and [EMAIL PROTECTED] and archives the mail at http://www.crypto.com/exports/mail.txt. According to my server logs, that (large) file gets a few hits an hour. As of today, 128 announcements of crypto software availability have been forwarded through it. Lately, the flow of announcement messages has been dwarfed by the bombardment of spam that you'd expect a relatively long-lived, widely-published email address to receive. The alias gets about 100 spam messages a day (I don't keep track any more, I just delete them from the archive every now and then). By contrast, the last message actually announcing crypto software was sent at the beginning of February. Deleting the spam has gotten to be a real chore, and I have a sense that perhaps the alias may have run its course and outlived any useful purpose it may have once served. There are now other ways to advertise open-source software and other archived mailing lists to which messages to the government can be openly cc'd. I'm considering shutting the [EMAIL PROTECTED] alias down, or perhaps I might leave it up but not maintain the archive web page. Would this be a terrible inconvenience for anyone? Does anyone actually depend on this service at this point? If so, I'll be happy to keep it running, but if not, I think it may be time to pull the plug. -matt m --------------------------------------------------------------------- The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
