Re: Export restrictions ruled unconstitutional

Robert Harley (Robert.Harley@inria.fr)
Fri, 7 May 1999 19:26:23 +0200 (MET DST)


>I'm curious about the legal details here --- my impression had been
>that you were a British citizen living in France [...]

Irish (of the non-U.K. variety) in France, actually.

I sent a comment to NIST about Round 1 of the AES process, as did some
other people. We heard that NSA told NIST to stop redistributing AES
documents with source code in them.

Sure enough when NIST released a collation of the comments a few weeks
later, in the middle of mine where source code had once been was a
snippet of code and a note "[Remainder of code removed from electronic
copy of public comments, due to export restrictions]".

Not a big deal, but it gave me that "what about when they come for *you*?"
feeling. Shiver!

Rob.