Re: export regulations

Re: export regulations

Posted Jan 19, 2005 1:53 UTC (Wed) by mmarsh (subscriber, #17029)
In reply to: Re: export regulations by roelofs
Parent article: IBM's patent pledge

True, but at present cryptographic algorithms (with keys above a certain length) are controlled by the export regulations, and are only "freely distributable" because of specific license exceptions. It would presumably be more difficult for Commerce to decide that something not yet under export controls should be controlled than to change the rules for something already controlled.

The funny thing is that, as good as RSA with keys lengths above 512 bits is, there are much better techniques for some things that aren't controlled at all. There's no restriction on one-time pads, for one thing, and Shamir's secret sharing is as secure as the length of your message space. As in there's nothing to invert, so you can't even brute-force it.

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