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Re: Re[2]: use of RSA outside US



>
> >  Of course there's another aspect to this: If Jonathon Tidswell lives 
> >  in one of those countries that outlaw all private cryptography unless 
>  the local police-state has a copy of the keys (France & England head 
> >  this list BTW), he's breaking _local_ law if he ever uses his new toy.
> 
> Incorrect, cryptography is banned in the UK over public access frequencies.
> This means you can't scramble a satelite for one of the UK public bands 
> without the govt. being able to decrypt it. It also stops you from sending 
> encrypted ham radio.
> 

Just to make this clear. For the type of product we're discussing, there
is no problem whatsoever with using crypto systems in the UK.

The only time that GCHQ (UK equiv of NSA) get interested is when
you try and export the product and it uses some algorithm that
they've never heard of.

This information is from first hand experience. I was involved in a publicly
available crypto modem 10 years ago. The spooks (after 3 months with 2 modems
and the source code) eventually admitted it was based on no known algorithm.
(And they missed at least one of the twists in it :-)


-- 
Martin Poole, Perot Systems Europe              mpoole@heac001.gb.ec.ps.net
 "No matter where you go, there you are."       mpoole@cix.compulink.co.uk