[Noisebridge-discuss] Deep Crack

[Sai Emrys]

On Thu, Oct 8, 2009 at 12:54 PM, Colin Bayer <vogon at icculus.org> wrote:
> [snip military crypto law craziness]

... wow, that's pretty dense even for me to read. I admire your
ability to make some sense of that.

A few other relevant bits:
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/22/usc_sec_22_00002778----000-.html
http://codes.lp.findlaw.com/uscode/22/39/IV/2791
http://ecfr.gpoaccess.gov/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=ecfr;sid=073fa0fdecf2cf0c680ae04bdc74c4ef;rgn=div5;view=text;node=22%3A1.0.1.13.65;idno=22;cc=ecfr

AFAICT the restrictions are only on export or sale to foreign
nationals (neither of which is contemplated AFAICT). I don't see
anything that says that e.g. NB-affiliated non-US citizens can't
simply *use* it, despite its being possibly "significant military
equipment". Or for that matter, that we might not make it publicly
available to anyone willing to paypal us the power bill. (Though
perhaps this'd come under some obscure interpretation of 'export'?)

There are also at least some exemptions for scientific & research use,
which I think we qualify as. But this chunk of law is incredibly
obtuse, so I may well have missed something.


OT, I wonder if this issue of the law keeping up with tech is
intractable. To fix it one would need to either make laws very quickly
(as such things go - i.e. within 1 yr or so), or somehow make a law
about tech that isn't conceived of yet. Both seem like pretty hard
problems. (And then they'd have to face the difficulty of trying to
actually enforce those laws.... viz what happened to decss. :-P)

- Sai