9 September 1999

    Date: Wed, 08 Sep 1999 18:18:36 -0700
    To: John Young <jya@pipeline.com>
    From: Bill Stewart <bill.stewart@pobox.com>
    Subject: Re: PECSENC Report Up
    Cc: cypherpunks@algebra.com

    Dorothy Denning's site now says

    	"Liberalization 2000, the recommendations of the
    	President's Export Council Subcommittee on Encryption (PECSENC),
    	is temporarily unavailable.
    	According to FACA, it was not to have been distributed
    	and discussed with the Press until after it was approved by the full PEC
    	and sent to the President. I did not know this at the time I posted it.
    	I had received a go-ahead from Commerce.
    	Everyone on the PECSENC has been asked
    	to take it off their Web sites and to refrain from
    	further discussions with the press.
    	I believe the PEC is scheduled to meet the week of Sept. 20.
    	I will re-post as soon as possible."

    Does anybody have a copy of Dorothy's version?

    If I'm reading Crowell's version of the recommendations correctly,
    the stuff ought to be currently stalled in a back room
    full of ranting anti-privacy cryptograbbers and their PR flacks
    trying to figure out how to kill it without looking blatant,
    or how to at least not _look_ like they're giving up.

    I assume the recommendations still say "We're in charge here" and
    "Our chief weapons are Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt, and an
    almost fanatical devotion to government-excuse-of-the-month",
    and that there will be serious badness in the implementations,
    but in practice, they're recommending
    - legalizing 128-bit mass-market,
    - strong crypto for client-server apps supporting e-commerce
    (which means we can do encrypted portal-mail,
    if nobody reminds them that it means that), and
    - relatively unrestricted trade between well-behaved countries,
    which presumably means at least the Wassenaar Arrangers,
    and which is an obvious beginning of expansion to everybody except
    the US Enemies List (plus whichever of China, Russia, and Narcolombia the
    Congress is rattling sabres about at any given time.)

    Is it as good as saying "The First Amendment applies to crypto,
    so give up"?  No, but I expect the desire for speech control to
    take a long time to die out.  But it looked like they were
    beginning to acquire some clues about the importance of
    crypto to commerce, and starting to follow the money.
    On the other hand, the California legislature had passed
    medical marijuana legalization twice (both vetoed by Pete Wilson)
    before the people got fed up and passed a ballot initiative,
    and even now the various flavors of police keep trying to attack it.
    It'll get there, but it'll take a while.

    					Bill

    At 07:09 PM 8/25/99 -0400, JYA wrote:
    >William Crowell has provided PECSENC's recommendations
    >for revising encryption export regulations:
    >   http://cryptome.org/LIB42.htm
    >He writes:
    >"Attached are the recommendations of the PECSENC from our
    >July meeting. These recommendations were sent to the BXA in
    >July for consideration of the Interagency Working Group, and are
    >today being forwarded to Secretary Daley and to the PEC
    >Chairman."
    >
    >There'll be more on this with comments by PECSENC members
    >in a national daily tomorrow.
    >Dorothy Denning offers it too:
    >   http://www.cs.georgetown.edu/~denning/crypto/lib2000.html

    				Thanks!
    					Bill
    Bill Stewart, bill.stewart@pobox.com
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