Matt Blaze: My life as an international arms courier (1995)

Seagate's security dude claimed at RWC this year that NSA had threatened to ITARify their self encrypting devices if they allowed them to be used as engines for encrypting arbitrary data (to me and Perry Metzger, separately). IMO, this is likely bullshit.

http://www.international.gc.ca/controls-controles/about-a_pr...

It's really interesting to read what else is on the list.

These kind of scenarios are aplenty and can turn people from all ideologies into a libertarian for at least a few seconds... but I'm left wondering what good options are for actually assessing policies and laws before and after they are implemented.

After living under a few different legal systems in different countries, I find the US pretty lacking in the "so did that work?" component. Laws which are contentious, directly expensive, cause loud groups harm, or show up in the press are given attention, but this is a small slice of the whole legal/policy universe.

A law or policy which nobody knows about or enforces is 'operationally' cost/effective, but a system which implements these policies continuously is going to run into unintended consequences eventually (abuse, or sheer costs of a large legal apparatus).

Shouldn't there be good built-in mechanisms to actively give feedback to government about policy effectiveness? What would that look like?

http://www.cryptomuseum.com/crypto/att/tsd3600/

The variant the author carried is described as "developed for export purposes. It used a 'weak' cipher algorithm with a 40-bit key."

Should you feel the need, you can buy the E variant - "the first model with the ill-fated Clipper Chip inside" - for the low, low price of $60 here:

http://www.dutchguard.com/ATT-TSD-3600-telephone-security-de...