[424] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Re: NSA responds to criticism over weakening cellular crypto
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Marc Horowitz)
Fri Mar 21 19:21:37 1997
To: Eric Blossom <eb@comsec.com>
Cc: cryptography@c2.net
From: Marc Horowitz <marc@cygnus.com>
Date: 21 Mar 1997 19:01:07 -0500
In-Reply-To: Eric Blossom's message of Fri, 21 Mar 1997 12:48:36 -0800
Eric Blossom <eb@comsec.com> writes:
>> The other slime about the "export problem" for cellular phones is that
>> there is NO EXPORT PROBLEM. Because of spectrum allocation issues,
>> cellular manufacturers have to provide different models to different
>> countries anyway. They're already building different versions, so
>> there is no "export control" reason not to use good crypto in the US.
In a fair world, you would be right. But it's not. If a vendor
produced a domestic-us-only cellphone which did strong end-to-end
crypto, and also produced a weak- or no-crypto cellphone for export, I
suspect the export application for the latter phone would be
mysteriously delayed or rejected. Of course, there would be no
connection between the former and the latter that one could prove in
court.
Marc
