Word: exportation
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Historically, the U.S. has restricted exports of encryption to foreign countries. It is currently illegal to export encryption products beyond a certain strength without giving the government a key, a system known as "key escrow." Encryption has been classified as a type of munitions, a tool of war. The argument was that if terrorists, organized crime networks or other unpleasant people got their hands on powerful encryption software, they could encode their plans in a way that the CIA and the FBI couldn't understand...
...which makes a widely-used encryption engine, has opened an Australian subsidiary which can sell its technology world-wide. Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) has estimated that U.S. companies are forced to stand by and lose $60 billion a year of revenues as foreign competitors, unbound by export restrictions, sell to anyone who will...
...weak software. In January, a graduate student at Duke University took only four hours to break a code similar to those Web browsers use to protect credit card numbers. Netscape and Microsoft offer strong-encryption versions of their browsers to U.S. residents who ask for them, but because of export restrictions, the weak version is the standard. Many other products are similarly affected. Also in January, two private organizations, using $250,000 in computer equipment, cracked a code standard for government agencies and financial institutions in under 24 hours...
Nonetheless, such a plan would be extremely dangerous; just like the export restrictions, it would weaken individuals' privacy without hurting criminals. A key escrow law would be very difficult to enforce, since lawbreakers could always use the products already widespread before the restrictions. Whether the third parties involved in this system could be trusted would always be a matter of faith...
...about the young but not necessarily for them--have an honorable pedigree in Iran. The Shahrina sponsored a children's film festival for a dozen or so years before her husband was overthrown in 1979. Under the Ayatullah, as in the Pahlavi regime, Iranian films proved a valuable cultural export. Last month Majid Majidi's Children of Heaven became the first Iranian movie nominated for an Academy Award as best foreign film...