BXA Press Release on New Regs

hal@finney.org hal@finney.org
Thu, 13 Jan 2000 07:49:38 -0800


Jonathan Shapiro writes:
> The second question we should be raising is "What about secure operating
> systems?" Crypto is essentially useless if the end system is insecure.
> Today, such operating systems are not exportable. The effect of this law is
> that you can't sell a secure OS to an international corporate customer. An
> OS you can't sell is pretty useless, so nobody develops them.

With all the talk about crypto I didn't realize that there were
restrictions on export of secure OS.  Can you provide pointers/refs to
these laws?  I am curious to see how they would define a "secure" OS
since you'd think that every OS is in principle secure in some sense,
if it weren't full of bugs.

Thanks,
Hal