AW: AUCRYPTO: `Germany Frees Crypto' - do you believe it?

[Soquat, Hubertus, VIB3]

German crypto and Wassenaar position:

The new german government position makes very clear that R&D, =
production,
import and use of strong crypto products are not regulated, they are
complety free. That should give german crypto products an advantage to
users: they should know "what you get is what is really inside".Simply
difficult to understand that many users go with products which are weak =
and
are certainly not secure.

As far as export is concerned there is a regulation following our =
Wassenaar
obligations: legal basis is the EU directive for dual use (latest =
change:
Council decision changing annex IV 09.03.1999 (1999/193/GASP - Official
Journal L 73 19.03.1999) and the respective german national law
(Ausfuhrverordnung and Ausfuhrliste). The negotiations for further =
changes
to EU-Regulations are on the way and will be continued during the =
coming
finnish presidency.

Hubertus Soquat
Federal German Ministry of Economics and Technology
Berlin

	-----Urspr=FCngliche Nachricht-----
	Von:	Mok-Kong Shen [mailto:mok-kong.shen@stud.uni-muenchen.de]
	Gesendet am:	Freitag, 25. Juni 1999 17:46
	An:	ukcrypto@maillist.ox.ac.uk
	Cc:	aucrypto@suburbia.net
	Betreff:	Re: AUCRYPTO: `Germany Frees Crypto' - do you
believe it?

	Ross Anderson wrote:
	>=20
	> Some people are under the impression that France and Germany have
	> freed crypto. However, export controls look like being tightened.
	> Guess who organised that? As Brian eloquently puts it:

	To my humble knowledge, there is currently no export regulation in
	Germany of crypto (at least in software). The recent paper issued
	by the government expressedly says that R&D of crypto is free but
adds
	that the situation is to be reviewed in 2 years. There is some
wording=20
	apparently related to the issue of Wassenar but it appears that the=20
	government wishes not to implement Wassenar if possible rather than=20
	to implement it. I might be wrong in my reading and interpretation,
	of course. You should read the original

	    http://bmwi.de/presse/1999/0602prml.html

	or an English translation of it at John Young's site

	    http://jya.com/de-crypto-all.htm


	> GCHQ's agenda is obviously to stop people like Brian and me having
	> crypto source code on our web pages. They don't seem to have
	> understood that:
	>=20
	> (a) the public domain exemption will apply to the Serpent home
page
	>     which will still be there. If the exemption is removed, the
Serpent
	>     home page will still be available in Norway, Israel, Taiwan
...;

	However, if the law prohibits export of crypto in any form, whether
	printed, on magnetic media or via eletronic transmission, then there

	is no legal way the material can get across the country boarder at
	all and web publication will be out of question. But in US Berstein
has=20
	had success recently. His case probably will be re-opened in the
near=20
	future though. The outcome of that could have fairly wide impacts.=20
	That's why I suggested that some collective actions be taken to=20
	attempt to find somw arguments that eventually could be useful for
the=20
	Bernstein case. (See my recent two posts to aucrypto; the same
content
	can be found in sci.crypt.)

	M. K. Shen
	-----------------------------
	http://www.stud.uni-muenchen.de/~mok-kong.shen/ (Updated: 12 Apr 99)

	(Origin site of WEAK2-EX, WEAK3-EX and WEAK4-EX, three
Wassenaar-conform
	 algorithms based on the new paradigm Security through
Inefficiency.)
=09