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and export restrictions were greatly relaxed. Generally the extra restrictions say that
there are seven countries to which American, and also Israeli, companies are not allowed
to sell any sort of cryptography at all; these are the “seven ugly sisters” as they are
sometimes called, which include Syria, Libya, Iran, Korea and Cuba. So apart from the
seven countries, within the United States you can do whatever you want and can sell
anything to anyone. Outside the United States you can sell whatever you like to most
financial organisations, etc. You are limited to a certain extent if you try to sell to
foreign governments. So if you try to sell a certain encryption package or product to the
government of Singapore, then you have to get a specific licence for that. In most cases
you will get it. So the restrictions have been almost completely relaxed except for
extreme cases. I also know that there are still countries that limit importing products; for
example, Ukraine limits products that can be sold in Ukraine. We have to go through
certain internal certification. France has always been the best example of this, but I
believe that it had more to do with protecting local industries than anything that was
security-related. I only know that in order to sell to France we had to go through French
import restrictions. And this is the situation today. I can say that from my personal
experience. I am sometimes a witness to very strange restrictions in a sense that, for
example, if I am trying to sell something, there are some products that I can sell easily to
the Palestinian authorities and some products I cannot sell in Cuba. Why? Because the
Americans are more worried about sales to Cuba than they are to the Palestinian
authorities. But this does not damage our business that much.
Uneri : The situation in Turkey is such that any corporation that wants a licence has to
get an approval from the government. And that also applies to personal items. But as the
government cannot very well threaten people, the actual situation is different from the
law. I do not know the import limitations used in Turkey because our military uses local
encryption and decryption devices that are produced by our institution. If I understood it
correctly, the restrictions in the US were relaxed in 2001. I think relaxation means they
can listen to much more complicated encryption.
Erez : I am now in the Israeli market selling technologies and world-wide
cryptography. I think that the Big Brother situation is improving, so restrictions can go
in parallel with possibilities. I remember seven or eight years ago we were not allowed
to sell a scrambler for a telephone. Now we are speaking about the products of the free
market. So the problem is parallel with the countermeasures taken by those institutes
who want or need to control the international hemisphere; whatever, it goes beyond our
business. By the way, France is a good example of a country that did not allow any
commercial selling of any kind of deciphering system. We were trying some years ago
to sell deciphering systems for telephone conversations, not for the free market or
institutions, but to the general public and it was not allowed to be imported because it
contradicted with the interests of the authorities.
Vellone : In France you can sell equipment but the public cannot use it if the
equipment has not been approved by a local agency.
Aharoni : I would like to comment on the relaxation of export restrictions from the
US. I personally do not believe that NSA has the capability to encrypt material. It is not
practical to do so although they might be able to do it offline for very specific broadcasts,
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