From: strnlght@netcom.com (David Sternlight)
Newsgroups: sci.crypt,alt.security.pgp
Subject: Re: PKP/RSA comments on PGP legality
Date: 15 Dec 92 11:08:14 GMT
Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services (408 241-9760 guest)

Hugh Miller's article is filled with so many inaccuracies it's hard to
know where to start, so I'll treat only a few; the remainder is left
to others as it's pretty late at night. I'm going to digest, since the
message is so long.

The first part consists of a massive imputation of motives to Jim
Bidzos simply because he gave Carl Ellison some information. As it
happens, he gave the same information to me and others. Miller's
analysis reads like a paranoid piece of thinking to me.

He next finds the advocacy of ripem (which is legal) rather than
PGP (which is not, in the U.S.) sinister. More paranoia?

He then decides to interpret Bidzos' comments as "threats" instead
of statements of fact about Bidzos' interpretation of the PKP patents
and the Munitions Act. I must tell Miller, who appears to be winging
it without checking the Act, that Bidzos message to me contained
extensive quotations from the Munitions act which make it absolutely
clear to me that Bidzos is accurate and so is Ellison's summary.

Miller then enlightens us on what lawyers do. Is Miller an attorney,
or is this more imputation of motives for something Miller doesn't like?

Next Miller reports on RSA's income and number of licenses. Is Miller
making this up, too, or has he some hard data. According to what
Bidzos tells me there are a large number of licenses out there,
including Lotus Notes and several other major applications, future
IBM and Apple software, etc.

Then Miller characterizes as "intimidation and innuendo" what I would
characterize as "fair warning." He leaps from Bidzos mentioning that
PKP in the U.S. is an ITAR violation (Bidzos provided detailed
Munitions Act quotes in his message to me which convinces me he's
right), to Bidzos prosecuting developers under the ITAR. That's a
totally false statement. Miller then decides to use this as a way to
vamp to his obvious dislike of the Reagan Administration. Has no one
told Miller that Bush is President, and soon Clinton.

Next we have a superb analysis of why the government won't prosecute
anyway (because they're embarrassed by a few other incidents) which
simply takes the breath away, and is likely to go down in legal
annals. I'd hate to be a D.A. taking instructions from Miller.

Miller then moves to an attempt to argue that one may, with
impunity, post export-prohibited materials to a bulletin
board which foreigners have access to. His arguments at this
point have become pathetic in his eagerness to make himself
right and RSA wrong. He'd better talk to a few software companies
which sell export controlled materials, to see what safeguards
are, in fact required.

Then follows some more bad-mouthing of Bidzos.

This is followed by contradictory statements (and wrong ones)
about RSAREF. First we hear that he's never seen any RSAREF
compiled object code. A few sentences later we read that it's
compiled into the ripem beta. Then we hear that the ripem
beta isn't available on many platforms (false).

Well, there's lots more but I've run out of steam. Apologies for
the length of this, which matches paragraph for paragraph with
Miller's post--to include that post would have made this message
unconscionably longer.

Finally, I'm appalled that someone with the logical and factual
deficiencies represented in Miller's message is the moderator
of the PGP list. I can well imagine what goes on there.

David
Newsgroups: sci.crypt