2 February 1997
Dear John,
Thankyou for the copy of "New Zealand's Controls on the Export of Strategic
Goods", which arrived last week. After reading through this I have two further
questions in addition to the ones I asked in my previous letter, which apply to
the "General Technology Note" and "General Software Note".
First, is there any restriction on the distribution of books, magazines, and
journals containing encryption code? I have a large number of publications
containing both complete implementation details for all of the algorithms
incorporated in cryptlib, and fairly complete source code which contains all
the encryption functionality of cryptlib. These books and magazines are from
all over the world. Are there any restrictions on shipping them to any other
country?[1]
Secondly, you may be aware that I am a computer science student at the
University of Auckland. Last year I wrote, as part of my research, a technical
report entitled "Secure Online Electronic Commerce: The View from Outside the
US". This covers various forms of encryption technology and software in some
detail, and incorporates as part of the report the cryptlib code. Since
printing this would make the report unmanageably large, it is included on a
disk attached to the back page of the report. This is pretty much standard
form for computer science reports, which often include large amounts of source
code or software. The "General Technology Note" exempts basic scientific
research from export controls. This technical report in its entirety
represents basic scientific research published by a New Zealand university, and
includes the right by recipients to disseminate it freely with no limitations
on how it may be used. Are there any restrictions on sending the complete
technical report to universities and researchers overseas?[2]
Yours sincerely,
Peter Gutmann
International Security and Arms Control Division
Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade
Private Bag 18 901
Wellington
[1] The intent here was to determine whether taking a copy of (say) Dr.Dobbs
Journal (a US computer magazine freely available all over the world) bought at
a local dairy onto a plane as reading material, or a library sending one of
their books overseas on interloan, would be prosecuted by MFAT.