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From: henry@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer)
Newsgroups: sci.crypt,net.sources.d,misc.legal
Subject: Re: There are basically no export controls on public domain information.
Message-ID: 
Date: Tue, 21-Oct-86 12:59:54 EDT
Article-I.D.: utzoo.7253
Posted: Tue Oct 21 12:59:54 1986
Date-Received: Tue, 21-Oct-86 12:59:54 EDT
References:   , 
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
Lines: 16

One is wasting one's time looking for sensible, reasonable explanations
for the US government's attitude to such things.  There aren't any; the
government is paranoid about the issue, pure and simple.  Trying to reason
with them about it is futile.

I recently read about one of the silliest examples yet.  There was one
US experiment aboard one of the Soviet "Vega" Halley probes.  It got there
through private cooperation between Soviet and US experimenters, not through
government initiatives, since things were pretty frosty at that time.  The
funny part is that the Soviet scientists were puzzled about its lack of a
microprocessor.  It was the only experiment aboard that didn't have its
own micro running it.  The reason was that the US experimenter didn't want
to run afoul of US export bureaucrats at the last minute.
-- 
				Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
				{allegra,ihnp4,decvax,pyramid}!utzoo!henry