Kathleen Ellis[SMTP:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] posted a news item about Wassenar
re-deal to the crypto list (and many others posted it to other lists)
[...stuff we all read...]
> ...specifically excluded from export controls
> products that used encryption to protect intellectual property...
Well, that's alright then. I don't intend to use encryption to do anything
other than protect my "intellectual property", by stopping you reading it if
I don't want you to. Or Rupert Murdoch the only one allowed to own
"intellectual property" these days?
More to the point - I have*only* seen that Reuters press release or comments
based on it so far. None of the lists I read have got any actual text of the
agreement. There wasn't anythign about it on the BBC this morning (although
radio 4 is still taken up with the House of Lords doing an Edwina) & nothing
on the web (even though the usually excellent BBC site & a number of others
have front-page articles about political dissidents in China and other
repressive countries using the Net:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/asia-pacific/newsid_227000/227727.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/monitoring/newsid_200000/200708.stm )
The PR looks awfully like spin to me. Have countries like Germany or Finland
*really* volunteered to force their citizens (and businesses) to only use
crypto which can be easily read by NSA and GCHQ?
As Ross Anderson is now being quoted all over the net as saying: " the real
aim of current [UK govt] policy is offensive, i.e. to ensure the continued
effectiveness of US information warfare assets against individuals,
businesses and governments in Europe and elsewhere."
And the other countries know this (I'm sure that the German giovernment
doesn't *really* think that the reason the US is pushing this through is to
help the government of China and Iraq spy on their own dissidents, even
though that will be one of the main effects of it) Or do they just realise
that the new laws (if ever passed by the various national parliaments) are
likely to be as dead a set of letters as the one about straw in taxis?
Ken Brown
