Eric King: > Hi all, > > I thought this list would be interested to know that the British Government > has decided to place FinFisher under UK export controls. There are a ton of > questions that remain to be answered, and it's only part of the bigger goal > to control the export of surveillance technology, but it's a good first step! > >> In a letter sent earlier in August to Privacy International's lawyers Bhatt >> Murphy, a representative of the Treasury Solicitor stated: >> >> The Secretary of State, having carried out an assessment of the FinSpy >> system to which your letter specifically refers, has advised Gamma >> International that the system does require a licence to export to all >> destinations outside the EU under Category 5, Part 2 (‘Information >> Security’) of Annex I to the Dual-Use Regulation. This is because it is >> designed to use controlled cryptography and therefore falls within the scope >> of Annex I to the Dual-Use Regulation. The Secretary of State also >> understands that other products in the Finfisher portfolio could be >> controlled for export in the same way." >> >> Press release is here: >> https://www.privacyinternational.org/press-releases/british-government-admits-it-has-already-started-controlling-exports-of-gamma >> >> Full copy of the letter: >> https://www.privacyinternational.org/sites/privacyinternational.org/files/downloads/press-releases/2012_08_08_response_from_tsol.pdf > Best, > > Eric
This is absolutely fucking horrible. They're controlling it based on *cryptography* after we WON the cryptowars? What. The. Fuck. And even worse, they must require a license? And they don't state categorically that they'll deny it on some kind of humanitarian or anti-crime related basis? I mean, I am sure this is the result of a lot of hard work by many people and I don't mean to imply any disrespect. Did this just undercut the work from the 90s? Wany people explicitly fought hard to win the decision of having our free speech rights apply to the net for code as speech. Argh, Jake -- Unsubscribe, change to digest, or change password at: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech
