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From: buck@granite.cr.bull.com (Ken Buck)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: PKZIP version 1.10 and data encryption
Message-ID: <1990Mar28.122032.28195@granite.cr.bull.com>
Date: 28 Mar 90 12:20:32 GMT
References: <KPETERSEN.12576936709.BABYL@WSMR-SIMTEL20.ARMY.MIL> <3726.261001b4@vax5.cit.cornell.edu> <1990Mar28.080100.27077@uwasa.fi>
Reply-To: buck@granite.cr.bull.com (Ken Buck)
Distribution: comp
Organization: Bull HN Information Systems Inc.
Lines: 17

In article <1990Mar28.080100.27077@uwasa.fi> ts@uwasa.fi (Timo Salmi LASK) writes:
>>In article <KPETERSEN.12576936709.BABYL@WSMR-SIMTEL20.ARMY.MIL>, w8sdz@WSMR-SIMTEL20.ARMY.MIL (Keith Petersen) writes:
  [stuff re: PKZIP, etc. deleted]

   This is just a thought, but...  the Federal law (which I am *NOT* claiming to
know in any detail) supposedly restricts EXPORT of data encription technology.
If you load PKZIP, etc. on a public network, you haven't transferred the data
TO anyone (it's just sitting there on your disk). If someone from netland
across the borders decides to copy it, well, you did nothing ACTIVE to
facilitate it.  Is this a loophole?  Of course, if the law says 'you can't
make the stuff AVAILABLE to foreign countries', that's different, since even
the act of making the data >reachable< breaks this one.
   Of course, the whole concept is ludicrous anyway, since if the unspecified
foreign "bad guys" want data encription technology, they're certainly not
about to disassemble PKZIP and reverse engineer the thing - trust me, they've
already obtained it by other methods (for example, maybe they even thought it
up THEMSELVES! now *that's* a novel concept, Mr. US Government!)