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Can't find the damn site at the moment, unfortunatly. It might have been http://cwis.kub.nl/~frw/people/koops/lawsurvy.htm, but that's offline for now. The site was a big collection and comparison of many countries legislation regarding cryptography.

The Free/Libre/Open-Source Software (FLOSS) movement seems to understand this, but many mass-market proprietary software developers are still able to flout this rule. Unfortunately, most computer users have become accustomed to being subservient to their software.

My own experience with most FLOSS has been much like my experience with high-speed Internet service: I can never go back. I think once people get a good taste of what using well-behaved software is like, things will quickly change. The only things that can get in the way of this change are:

• Restrictions on cryptography,
• Software Patents, and
• Other bought legislation

Get out, drink lots of beer, and build an AI out of the cans to prove Searle wrong.

This was my final year project thesis. Just remember the golden rule unstructured 2 structured == convert 2 XML I wrote a [very bad] program in C++/Perl/tcsh IPC=pipes to add XML tags to English, and then index them into a search engine which would use the lingual data stored in the XML tags to help the search.

NIST does a MASSIVE competition on this annually. I don't want to be an XML-buzzword whore <Arnold Schwarzenegger accent> (XML commando eats Green berets, C++, Java, Perl, COBOL for breakfast)</Arnold Schwarzenegger accent> but you can't beat XML for easily converting anything that you can make sense out of into computer readable format. Real h3cKoRs use SGML, but us underlings have to stick with things we can understand like XML. As for expandability, if we want to encode something else into the document, then just tag-it-and-go

It took me 200 hours to fish out all these links (before the Google days), I don't want anyone to have to waste as much time as I did feeding the search engines exotic foods. It's a year old so pardon me for the odd broken link, armed with these you could probably turn jello into XML ;-)

My favourite bookmarx
PROJect[21 links]
Beginners' Guide[13 links]
Berkeley Linguistics Dept. Course Summaries, general stuffzzzzzzzzzzzzzzCryptic IR Vocabulary defined
Explanations of weird words like hypernym zzzzzzzzzzzzzzHow do we produce and understand speech
How Inverted Files are Created - Univeristy of Berkeley zzzzzzzzzzzzzzNLP Univ. of Indiana, very good basics e.g. word sense d
Simple langauge - useful.... zzzzzzzzzzzzzzWhat is Natural Language Processing, links
What is POS tagging........ zzzzzzzzzzzzzzWord Sense Disambiguation defined
Word Sense Disambiguation in detail, scroll down far zzzzzzzzzzzzzzWord Sense Disambiguator - LOLITA (tested at MUC-7 and SENSEVAL competition as best)
XML for the absolute beginner

HTML, XML stuff + parsers[19 links]
Apache plug-in that uhhh does stuff with XML zzzzzzzzzzzzzzConvert COM to XML
convert XML, HTML to Unix pipeable formats zzzzzzzzzzzzzzconverters to and from HTML
expat XML parser zzzzzzzzzzzzzzHTML Tidy - converts HTML 2 XML + source code!!
Parse DB (RDBMS, whatever) to XML zzzzzzzzzzzzzzPerl-XML Module List
PHP Manual XML parser functions - what the hell are they talking about, PHP Virtual M... zzzzzzzzzzzzzzPublic SGML-XML Software
Pyxie - XML Processor for Python, Perl, etc. zzzzzzzzzzzzzzSGML+XML tools.org
The XML Resource Centre - massive number of links zzzzzzzzzzzzzzW4F wrapper - wrapper converts XML to HTML
XFlat - convert flat file into XML zzzzzzzzzzzzzzXML Parsers and other XML stuff
XML.com - Parsers, etc. zzzzzzzzzzzzzzXML-Data Catalog System - uhhhh looks close
XTAL's general converter - convert anything 2 XML

other Background[8 links]
Is Linux ready for the Enterprise, scalable... zzzzzzzzzzzzzzLinux reliability
Linux Versus Windows NT, Mark(sysinternals bloke) zzzzzzzzzzzzzzPC reliability (pcworld)
SPEC - Standard Performance Evaluation Corp. zzzzzzzzzzzzzzSystems benchmarks
TPC - Transaction Processing Performance Council zzzzzzzzzzzzzzUnix Beats Back NT In EDA Workstation Arena
Proper TREC(-8) QA systems[2 links]

pg. 387 LIMSI-CNRS pretty deep parsing[2 links]
More links....
NLP, IR links - lots to corpii, etc.

pg. 575 U. of Ottawa and NRL (shit system, got 0%)[1 links]
LAKE Lab
pg. 607! University of Sheffield (crap system, but OPEN SOURCE!)[2 links]
GATE - FREE IE app w`source code
LaSIE - ER, coreference, template (cv)

pg. 617 Univ of Surrey (inconclusive matches)[2 links]
System Quirk - Or is this their search system..... Hmmmmmm
Univ of Surrey - pointers (hopefully this is their WILDER search system...)

SMU - Pg. 65[1 links]
Natural Language Processing Laboratory at SMU

Textract[2 links]
Cymfony - Technology
Textract - State of the Art Information Extraction

Xerox uhhhhh maybe[1 links]
Xerox Palo Alto Research Center
(OVERVIEW) 1999 TREC-8 Q&A Track Home Page
NLP bloke, Univ Sussex


Tcl-Tk[4 links] Tcl tutorial
Tcl-Tk Contributed Programs Index
Tcl-Tk Resources, sources
TclXML - manipulating XML using Tcl-Tk
Artificial Natural Language - Is this what I'm trying to parse into...
Comparison of Indexers - Prise vs. Inquery vs. MG, etc.
Eagles - Language Engineering Standards
Language Technology Group - lots of modules!
LDC - Linguistic Data Consortium, lots of corpora
Lexical Resources
Links 2 resources, indexers.....
Lots of IR stuff, University of uhhh
Managing Gigabytes Indexer
Managing Gigabytes Manuals and stuff
Htdig search system
NLP & IR (NLPIR, NIST) Group
OVERVIEW OF MUC-7-MET-2
Perl XML Indexing - XML search engine type thing
Phrasys Language Processing Software Components (money)
QA HCI bullshit
SIGIR - TREC-type thing, resources
SMART indexer system documentation
Text REtrieval Conference (TREC) Home Page
The Natural Language Software Registry
Thunderstone IE and IR products
WordNet - FREE DOWNLOADABLE lexical English database

Page created with URL+, nice utility for working with internet shortcuts

Actually, not that many countries have any problem on the import of cryptography. The ones that do (Russia, China, et al.) already produce decent ciphers and security produces. And, the pages are easy to hide in luggage, or whatever.

So, I think this proposal is still a crock.

Also, Bert-Jaap Koops's Crypto Law Survey.

The Crypto Law Survey is a great resource on crypto law worldwide, listing country-by-country. To give an example, some people might still believe that France has outlawed domestic crypto, but as you can see that's no longer the case.

Alex Bischoff
---

The Crypto Law Survey is a great resource on crypto law worldwide, listing country-by-country. To give an example, some people might still believe that France has outlawed domestic crypto, but as you can see that's no longer the case.

Alex Bischoff
---

That is no longer the case in France -- crypto up to 128 bits is now allowed (IIRC).

Alex Bischoff
---

Wow. The HOWTO contained a link to a summary of crypto law thruout the world. Quite a resource, and definitely something that anyone contemplating this technique ought to be aware of. Here's the link.

Being an A.C., not to mention semi-literate, I doubt that you'll see this, but just in case others do: go here . Take a look at the template for how an oppressive government goes about its business. I wish you well in your island Gulag, Brits.

...around the world here

• Laws keep changing anyway
• Precedents in other areas keep getting set (I thought Germany had fairly sane laws until some quibble about Demon Internet there, IIRC)
• Where's a nice place to live, generally?
• Cost of moving
• Cost of living, taxation, others

-- Maz
Living a nomadic lifestyle with a laptop

First off, the standard disclaimer: IANAL. But I can use Google to find and read what Lawyers have already written.

Item 1:

A. Michael Froomkin, Associate Professor, University of Miami School of Law writes in his article "The Metaphor is the Key": Simply putting something into a safe does not, however, ensure that it is beyond the law's reach. It is settled law that a criminal defendant can be forced to surrender the physical key to a physical safe, so long as the act of production is not testimonial.{706} Presumably a similar rule compelling production would apply to a criminal defendant who has written down the combination to a safe on a piece of paper. There appears to be no authority on whether a criminal defendant can be compelled to disclose the combination to a safe that the defendant has prudently refrained from committing to writing, and in Fisher v. United States,{707} the Supreme Court hinted that compelling the disclosure of documents similar to a safe's combination might raise Fifth Amendment problems.{708} Perhaps the combination lock problem does not arise because the police are able to get the information from the manufacturer or are simply able to cut into the safe. These options do not exist when the safe is replaced by the right algorithm. Although brute-force cryptography is a theoretical possibility,{709} neither safe cracking, nor number crunching, nor an appeal to the manufacturer is a practical option when the armor is an advanced cipher. The recently released Federal Guidelines for Searching and Seizing[Page 872]Computers{710} suggest that "[i]n some cases, it might be appropriate to compel a third party who may know the password (or even the suspect) to disclose it by subpoena (with limited immunity, if appropriate)."{711}

(The numbers are footnotes to specific cases)

Item 2:

The Crypto and Self-Incrimination FAQ simply lists (for America... it also covers a few other countries): "The Fifth Amendment of the Bill of Rights reads: "No person (...) shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself". The Supreme Court has restricted this to giving evidence "of a testimonial or communicative nature". ". It also lists several cases that apply.

--
Evan --

For vast amounts of info on just about every country on earth, see Bert-Jaap Koops's excellent Crypto Law Survey page.

While it's true that we are much less fettered by export regulations than our neighbours to the south, we still do have some restrictions on the export of software here in Canada. For more information, see the following web pages:

Canada's Export Controls
Excerpts from the Export Control List of Canada
The Wassenaar Arrangement, which Canada has signed
Crypto Law Survey of Canada

And, more generally,
Electronic Frontier Canada