[plug] Crypt/Decrypt?

[Matt Kemner]

On Sat, 1 May 1999, Tamara Thompson wrote:

> But still, sure was easy having a distrib with an encrypt prgm included
> with it.  

The reason no distribution comes with encryption, is because under U.S.
law encryption is classed as a weapon, and it's illegal to export weapons
from the U.S.  That would mean RedHat can't sell to anyone but U.S.
citizens, and those U.S. citizens would not be allowed to
a) put it on a world-accessible ftp site
b) post the CDs to another country

etc.

Import is fine however (surprise surprise) so I could send you the "RSA in
3 lines of perl" signature at the end of this message (which is 3 lines of
perl that allows you to encrypt your files with RSA, which is the strong
encryption used in PGP) but then you couldn't reply to my message without
deleting those lines, because you're not allowed to "export" that program.

On the other hand if you were to print them out and snail-mail it to me,
you wouldn't be breaking the law, or so I'm told.

The "RSA in 3 lines of perl" was written precisely to show how stupid the
laws are, however, with many U.S. citizens adding it to their signature
file, deliberately becoming Arms Traffickers because they believe if
everyone does it, the U.S. can't possibly prosecute them all.

http://www.dcs.ex.ac.uk/~aba/rsa/ for the code and more info.

 - Matt