ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, December 19, 1996 TAG: 9612190091
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-16 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: SAN FRANCISCO
SOURCE: Associated Press
Government restrictions on the export of computer encryption programs are an unconstitutional interference with freedom of speech, a federal judge decided in a ruling made public Wednesday.
U.S. District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel ruled in favor of an Illinois professor of mathematics who attempted to publish his encryption code on the Internet.
Mathematician Daniel Bernstein's encryption program, called Snuffle, converts a readable message into a code that can be read only by using his decryption program, Unsnuffle.
The State Department initially decided in 1993 that the programs as well as an academic paper Bernstein wrote to describe his ideas were military articles that required licenses to communicate abroad.
The department withdrew that designation for the academic paper in 1995 but left it in place for the programs, prompting the lawsuit.
The judge's ruling is not binding outside California's Northern District, which includes Silicon Valley. Another federal judge in Washington, D.C., upheld the export ban earlier this year.
Patel stopped short of forbidding the government to place any restrictions on the export of encryption programs. But she said the current restrictions went too far.
There are no time limits on the State Department office that makes the licensing decisions, no standards for denial of a license and no provision for appealing a denial, the judge noted.
She said the licensing system was ``a paradigm of standardless discretion'' and ``an unconstitutional prior restraint in violation of the First Amendment.''
Patel noted the impact on businesses, which have complained that government restrictions hamper their ability to protect sensitive data transmissions.
LENGTH: Short : 44 linesby CNB