[Noisebridge-discuss] deep crack announcement .. tax issue/

Sai Emrys noisebridge at saizai.com
Fri Oct 9 02:22:05 UTC 2009


2009/10/8 Jacob Appelbaum <jacob at appelbaum.net>:
>> AFAIU the current discussion, that's the value proposal of this to NB
>> as is - as a museum piece, not really so much as an actual tool.
>> Perhaps there are more such things worthy of more active display?
>> (E.g. perhaps the stuff from Arse & Open House?)
>
> How can you say that when I am advocating using it as a tool for a
> specific project?! :-(

I didn't mean that to denigrate its actual utility or your desire to
use it. What I meant is simply that
a) it's fairly expensive to run, thus meaning that projects that elect
to pay for its cost will be fewish
b) DES cracking is of limited utility compared to its interest as a NB
museum piece - it seems to me that your proposal for why the general
membership ought to be interested was more aimed at the latter (i.e.
"it's a cool piece of hacking history")

Mind, I don't see its being a museum piece and its being functional as
at all in conflict. Actually, having functional things is better; it's
what makes Exploratorium fun, and I'd consider that place at least
half museum-ish. (If you don't, reinterpret my use of 'museum' to be
whatever the hell Exploratorium is to you.)

2009/10/8 Seth David Schoen <schoen at loyalty.org>:
> A part of U.S. export law that has long been a concern for researchers
> is the notion of a "deemed export" (which exists in some form under
> both the ITAR and EAR regimes):
>
> http://www.bis.doc.gov/deemedexports/deemedexportsfaqs.html

2009/10/8 Jonathan Foote <jtfoote at ieee.org>:
> Used to work on ITAR stuff in grad school (advanced semi
> manufacturing, go figure). Foreign grad students (and professors) were
> specifically forbidden access.
>
> from http://epic.org/crypto/export_controls/itar.html:
>
> "Export means, for purposes of this subchapter:
>  ...
> (d) Disclosing or transferring technical data to a foreign person, whether
> in the United States or abroad"

Looks like my reading definitely missed this; I defer to your greater
experience. Thanks for the links & quotes; I always find it
interesting how mega-organizations (like our dear feds) try to control
things that are so trivially decentralized. ;-)

This seems to indicate though that there might be restrictions on
who's allowed to talk about what and where with this (e.g. since we
have non-US-citizen list members, hypothetically we can't discuss
DeepCrack's usage or mechanism here?).

This seems both pretty lame and un-Noisebridge-y. OTOH, it also seems
to me to be totally unenforceable and extremely unlikely to actually
be an issue.

But that's a risk/reward judgment for those who actually have a stake
in it to make, which I am not. I don't really have any opinion on
whether NB ought to have it, anyway; I just think it's kinda shiny.

- Sai



More information about the Noisebridge-discuss mailing list