Wired: US To Follow EU Crypto Lead

[Owen Lewis]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Brian Gladman" <brian.gladman@btinternet.com>
To: <ukcrypto@maillist.ox.ac.uk>
Sent: 06 June 2000 22:49
Subject: Re: Wired: US To Follow EU Crypto Lead


> My own perception of the six (or more) year effort in Europe to remove
> cryptography export controls is that the real support for this has come
from
> Germany and the European Commission and that the UK has been dragging its
> feet over much of this period.  I know for sure that certain parts of the
UK
> government machine have sought on more than one occassion to undermine my
> own efforts in Europe to secure the removal of cryptography export
controls.

 Is there a need to do this if the implementation is in software? Geneva is
no further in time from LHR that my office is from London. The Swiss have no
specific crypto import or export regulations and while software engineering
is not cheap anywhere, software production costs are negligible. Setting up
a Swiss company cost less than UKP 10,000.

If the implementation is in hardware, Swiss costs may be up to double UK
costs, though the exchange rate at the present disguises this underlying
factor.

There seems to be a good case for allowing the market to decide. If
cryptosystem production is most profitable if conducted in Switzerland, then
that is where it should be conducted. If countries with restrictive regimes
see an important economic loss that may review a stance when they would not
otherwise doing so. That said, I believe only one person has ever made a
million from cryptosystems -and he did it from Switzerland :-)

Owen Lewis