26 February 1997
Source: http://www.bxa.doc.gov/01-.pdf (32K)

Public Comments on Encryption Items Transferred from
the U.S. Munitions List to the Commerce Control List

# 1. University of Waterloo

University of Waterloo
Department of Computer Science
University of Waterloo
Waterloo, Ontario, Canada N2L 3G1
(519) 888-4804; Fax (519) 885-1208
E-mail: shallit@graceland.waterloo.ca

December 31 1996

Nancy Crowe
Regulatory Policy Division
Bureau of Export Administration
Department of Commerce
14th Street and Pennsylvania Ave., N.W.
Room 2705
Washington, D.C. 20230 USA

Dear Ms. Crowe:

As a US citizen residing in Canada, I am most concerned about the new encryption regulations recently put in place by the Clinton administration.

As a professor at a Canadian university, I teach algorithmic number theory and cryptographic applications. Nearly all of my students are non-US citizens. The vagueness of these restrictions potentially endanger my right to instruct students in my area of research. Furthermore, they are almost certainly unconstitutional, as Judge Marilyn Hall Patel recently ruled.

It is simply nonsensical to attempt to prohibit the export of information about and software for strong cryptography. The genie is out of the bottle, and there is virtually nothing that can be done to stuff it back in.

Yours sincerely,

(Prof.) Jeffrey Shallit

Hypertext by DN and JYA/Urban Deadline