Once connected to the Internet, for example, information is accessible from anywhere in the world. Geographic location, legal jurisdiction, and even borders are becoming meaningless to the transfer of information.
Export control requires the recognition of national borders.
In Canada, export controls apply to certain kinds of software. However, software is easily transferred over the Internet as bits of digital data. The problem facing the Minister of Foreign Affairs, as the person responsible for administering export control law in Canada, is how to control the flow of restricted software in a digital world without borders. On the Internet, software is normally available at anonymous FTP sites. FTP sites are databases of electronic files which are available to be downloaded over the Internet by the standard F ile T ransfer P rotocol.