Export controls interfere with the marketing and sale of powerful encryption technology. Software makers must develop one product for sale nationally and another for sale internationally, which is often prohibitively expensive. In developing a product for international sale, they must choose between two unpalatable and unprofitable options. The first is to sell a product internationally that offers only weak cryptographic protection. Export controls have severely hampered U.S. software companies' serving world markets for encryption software.
Export controls violate the First Amendment.
The export controls sometimes require academic research papers, discussions clearly protected by the First Amendment, that discuss ideas about cryptography to be submitted to the government for review. And, as one court recently held, software expresses ideas in language and is also protected by the First Amendment. Because of export controls, some professors refuse to allow foreign students to take their classes, fearing reprisals from International Traffic in Arms enforcers. The theory behind export controls is that they prevent strong encryption from falling into the hands of terrorists and criminals. But export restrictions will not keep strong encryption out of the hands of evildoers, since the technology is already widely available.