I say this because further clarifications to our current encryption regulations will be forthcoming in early October, so stay tuned. The U.S. recognizes there is an ever increasing global demand for information technology, and that it is important to make adjustments and updates to keep pace with all of the electronic wizardry, which now abounds. We believe these principles will meet important privacy, national security, and law enforcement needs, while also ensuring that the needs of the business community will be met. Having said that, I anticipate that the participants from the business community will say that we haven t quite gotten there yet. In closing, I want to briefly discuss the challenges of export regulation in an E-Commerce marketplace.
Products evolve at a rapid pace and can be transferred around the globe within the click of a mouse.
This has required regulators and businesses alike to swiftly adjust from a brick and mortar based export regulatory system, to a click and mortar based model. In the U.S., and I suspect other countries as well, the brick and mortar model, was based on businesses knowing their customers, establishing an export compliance program, and ensuring employees were generally aware of export regulations. And in the brick and mortar model, transfers were made by tangible means, and generally from a company s own warehouse. Little, if any, outsourcing occurred. The click and mortar model, in contrast, involves selling to customers whom businesses may not know, and negotiating contracts with those customers over the web.