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Europe Stalls on Crypto Exports
From: William Knowles <wk () C4I ORG>
Date: Sat, 27 May 2000 15:15:05 -0500
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,36623,00.html Wired News Report 12:25 p.m. May. 26, 2000 PDT The European Union has delayed a decision on a plan to end encryption export regulations. A formal announcement of the EU's removal of encryption-export barriers was scheduled for a meeting this week of the European Ministers of Foreign Affairs. But, citing too many items on the agenda, the committee postponed a decision until a June 13 meeting. European officials recently announced that member states had reached a tentative agreement on encryption regulation. France and the United Kingdom had long opposed relaxing the rules, but seemed willing to change their mind. They had argued it could place near-impenetrable technology into the hands of international terrorists. The U.S. also opposed the liberalization. The delay seems welcome to American encryption software companies that -- as of January -- were allowed greater freedom to export encryption technologies, but still remained subject to burdensome licensing procedures and controversial technical checks by the U.S. government. Those procedures gave a competitive advantage to European encryption software providers, which the expected vote would have reinforced. *-------------------------------------------------* "Communications without intelligence is noise; Intelligence without communications is irrelevant." Gen. Alfred. M. Gray, USMC --------------------------------------------------- C4I Secure Solutions http://www.c4i.org *-------------------------------------------------* ISN is sponsored by SecurityFocus.com --- To unsubscribe email LISTSERV () SecurityFocus com with a message body of "SIGNOFF ISN".
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- Europe Stalls on Crypto Exports William Knowles (May 27)