Re: MIME and mailcrypt

[Colin Rafferty <craffert@ms.com>]

Stainless Steel Rat writes:
> "Hrvoje" == Hrvoje Niksic <hniksic@srce.hr> writes:

Hrvoje> Yes; that's how TM is reported to work.  Adding this to Gnus now
Hrvoje> remains a small matter of programming.  Would such an addition
Hrvoje> really be illegal to export from the US?

> Yes, it is.  The way the Department of Justice got ITAR (International
> Trade in Arms Regulations) worded, it is functionality that is restricted.
> Although the DoJ seems to turn a blind eye to hooks, so long as the strong
> crypto is either not there or disabled.  To wit, Netscape Navigator export
> versions, which can be trivially patched to use 128-bit keys instead of
> 40-bit keys.

Then doesn't this mean that Gnus w/mailcrypt is still legal to export, 
since it actually isn't doing encryption, but calling a program that
does it for you.

Really, mailcrypt (and Gnus calling it) is only a hook.  We could tack 
on a weak encryption program, or a strong one -- it wouldn't be able
to tell the difference.

> Then again, there is the fact that if the code is written outside the US,
> the DoJ can't bitch about it (which is what we did for PGP 2.3 and 2.3a).

This doesn't matter, since we cannot re-export it from xemacs.org (in
the US).  It would really suck to have a part of XEmacs not under the
same cvs tree as the rest.

-- 
Colin