30 October 1998

    Date: Fri, 30 Oct 1998 11:07:35 +1000
    To: cryptography@c2.net
    From: Greg Rose <ggr@qualcomm.com>
    Subject: Movement on Export regulations

    I was in a TIA standards committee meeting the other day[*], which was
    attended by a couple of representatives from the NSA's export regulation
    group (they don't like naming names), and an interesting comment came out
    of them. After clarification, the comment boiled down to:

       "There is no longer any reason that an export licence for 56 bit
    encryption would be denied."

    That is, s/40/56/ in all previous discussions.

    This prompted me to ask whether the guidelines they used were themselves a
    matter of national security, that is, would a FOIA request for the
    guidelines be productive. I should have learned not to ask double barreled
    questions by now. After a short period of silence, I rephrased it to two
    questions. The former got an explicit "no comment", while the latter got a
    somewhat whimsical "if you like to see mostly black paper, with the
    occasional 'if' or 'the' visible, yes, it would be productive."

    With the US involvement in the international efforts to standardise 3rd
    generation mobile phones hamstrung by these regulations ("SHA based
    authentication algorithms cannot be exported to the ITU, because they don't
    exclude the T7 nations"), expect to see some more interesting action on
    this front from the telephone industry.

    Greg.

    Greg Rose                                       INTERNET: ggr@Qualcomm.com
    Qualcomm Australia          VOICE:  +61-2-9181-4851   FAX: +61-2-9181-5470
    Suite 410, Birkenhead Point,               http://people.qualcomm.com/ggr/
    Drummoyne NSW 2047      232B EC8F 44C6 C853 D68F  E107 E6BF CD2F 1081 A37C

    Greg,

    Provocative report. Can it be put on our Web site?

    Was that TIA meeting in the US?

    And, are wireless folks working with the TIA J-STD-025
    Interim Standard for "Lawfully Authorized Electronic
    Surveillance?"

    Thanks,

    John

    Date: Fri, 30 Oct 1998 15:42:14 +1000
    To: John Young <jya@pipeline.com>
    From: Greg Rose <ggr@qualcomm.com>
    Subject: Re: Movement on Export regulations

    >Provocative report. Can it be put on our Web site?

    Sure... I cleared it with my boss before I posted it.

    >Was that TIA meeting in the US?

    It was in Santa Barbara, 27-28th October, at the Harbor View Inn. The AHAG
    (TIA TR45 Ad Hoc Authentication Group) has previously invited public
    participation, see http://scitech.ctia.org/Security/index.html, and John
    Gilmore has occasionally asked for people to come to them.

    >And, are wireless folks working with the TIA J-STD-025
    >Interim Standard for "Lawfully Authorized Electronic
    >Surveillance?"

    We are in the process of figuring out how to comply... there
    is another TIA ad hoc group doing it, I think. The industry is pushing
    back, hard, but not necessarily successfully. The compliance date has
    already been pushed back (the original deadline to have it implemented has
    already passed).

    regards,
    Greg.

    Greg Rose                                       INTERNET: ggr@Qualcomm.com
    Qualcomm Australia          VOICE:  +61-2-9181-4851   FAX: +61-2-9181-5470
    Suite 410, Birkenhead Point,               http://people.qualcomm.com/ggr/
    Drummoyne NSW 2047      232B EC8F 44C6 C853 D68F  E107 E6BF CD2F 1081 A37C

    Note: J-STD-025, Interim Standard for "Lawfully Authorized Electronic
    Surveillance," December 1997, 146 pp. is available by online order from
    Global Engineering Documents for $136.00. Thanks to DE for pointing.