I seem to recall seeing something in Computerworld recently (written
by John Gilmore et al, I think) about the SPA reaching an agreement
with the "northern entity" regarding export of shrink-wrapped software
which contained encryption functionality. I think there was some
concern that the allowable key sizes were rather small, as well. Can
someone (John??) fill us in on the details of the agreement (what's
covered, constraints on key size, etc.)? Or is it classified :-)
The Software Publishers' Association was negotiating with the US
National Security Agency over export of commercial software containing
cryptography. These negotiations fell through, approximately when
they became publicly known; which was cause and which was effect remains
unclear. I have received permission to post the draft agreement, but
have not yet scanned it in.
The summary is that it allowed inferior cryptography with very limited
key sizes. The only algorithms allowed are RSA-proprietary block
ciphers, unexamined by public cryptographers, leading one to wonder
whether this is a quid-pro-quo for something RSA is doing/has done for
NSA. It also requires that any initializing vector appear in the
clear in the message -- leading me to wonder whether NSA's large scale
decryption hardware would be foiled by secret, random, initialization
vectors.
Had the agreement been signed, it would not have affected PEM
availability, since PEM uses stronger encryption (DES). It might have
had an effect desired by NSA, though: people would work on an
"insecure PEM subset" that would incorporate exportable encryption, to
give users the illusion of security without any actual security. I
hope that instead, the world cryptographic and email communities can
instead build PEM software in a free country, as the basis for
worldwide private email using the PEM standards.
John