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Although you may be in the field of chip design, you don't appear to be as knowledgeable about the field of sino-taiwanese politics. Given the politics of the folks in charge at TSMC, I'm not sure they would side with China over the USA. Many of them exited China during the cultural revolution and generally have a dim view of the Mainland.

In fact, the chairman of TSMC (morris chang, a harvard, mit, stanford alum) cut his teeth in the semiconductor business in the USA (in TI and General Instruments) before being recruited back by the Taiwanese government to found TSMC. Other than being born in mainland china, he's about as American as you can get (fwiw, he was also the guy in charge of bringing us TI's wonderful speak-n-spell). He's also on record supporting the Wassenaar Arrangement even though Taiwan isn't a signator, and I think I remember hearing that most of his daughters attended school and live in the US.

There is a fundamental misunderstanding here.

Corporate BB users generally run their own servers, which are encrypted end-to-end and as far as I know are "secure", or at least not directly compromised by RIM.
Consumer blackberries, however, rely on RIM for their servers and it is here that governments may spy on communication.

Governments have treated encryption like a WMD since enigma, and if they cannot access data simply make it illegal to either import, export or run encryption http://www.wassenaar.org/.

This makes me want to find a new continent and set up a country where the citizens are free ... oh wait...

A camera is a passive monitoring device, not an active one. It only forwards the light that enters the lens. Active monitors are those devices that emit waves and measure their reflective signals. Examples of active monitoring devices are radar, and microwave motion detectors(not the passive IR).

"Would you hold back technology in the worry it could be used for evil ends?"

Can you do anything about the people who hold back technology in the worry that it could be used for evil ends?

Take a look here http://www.wassenaar.org/

Pay special attention to the sections on dual use technologies.

The US Gov was going to get toasted in the Supreme Court anyway, so they changed the rules: check out the Wassenaar Arrangement. Can you say International Treaty? While the left hand was giving, the right hand was stuffing their cranium even further up their rectum.

Has anyone ever heard about 'the Wassenaar arrangement'?
It's full name is: The Wassenaar Arrangement on Export Controls for Conventional Arms and Dual-Use Goods and Technologies.
It's signed by 35 countries (including the US) and restricts the export of crypto-software and a lot of other things from all these countries.
If GPG is made in one of these countries you might get into trouble too.

Here in the Netherlands some attempts were made to regulate crypto, but public outcry made the politicians drop the silly plan. It is still legal to produce, sell, import, export or own cryptographic software here.

The US pushed the world to include crypto software as dual-use goods in the Wassenaar agreements, but since an explicit exception is made for `Public Domain' (includes GPL) software, it is relatively harmless. As far as cryptography is concerned, Europe is much more free than the US.

The Wassenaar Arrangement has been established in order to contribute to regional and international security and stability, by promoting transparency and greater responsibility in transfers of conventional arms and dual-use goods and technologies, thus preventing destabilising accumulations. Participating States will seek, through their national policies, to ensure that transfers of these items do not contribute to the development or enhancement of military capabilities which undermine these goals, and are not diverted to support such capabilities.

The decision to transfer or deny transfer of any item will be the sole responsibility of each Participating State. All measures undertaken with respect to the arrangement will be in accordance with national legislation and policies and will be implemented on the basis of national discretion. Therefore for specifics on Export Controls in Participating States, contact the National Authorities in that country.

Can anyone enlighten me on this??

The Wassenaar Arrangement has been established in order to contribute to regional and international security and stability, by promoting transparency and greater responsibility in transfers of conventional arms and dual-use goods and technologies, thus preventing destabilising accumulations. Participating States will seek, through their national policies, to ensure that transfers of these items do not contribute to the development or enhancement of military capabilities which undermine these goals, and are not diverted to support such capabilities.

The decision to transfer or deny transfer of any item will be the sole responsibility of each Participating State. All measures undertaken with respect to the arrangement will be in accordance with national legislation and policies and will be implemented on the basis of national discretion. Therefore for specifics on Export Controls in Participating States, contact the National Authorities in that country.

Can anyone enlighten me on this??

Unrestricted use, but not unrestricted distribution. Germany is bound by the wassenaar thingy, so export restrictions will remain. Well, atleast it's a (small) step in the right direction.

Ok, before this discussion gets out of hand and becomes a country bashing love-in, let me just inform you all that according to the terms of the Wassenaar Arrangement (which I believe is the apparant source of this peculiar requirement), software like GNU/Linux is specifically excluded from the "Dual Use List" (i.e. goods or technologies which can be used for the production of conventional weapons systems as well as other, non-military applications). To quote from the "General Software Note" section on page 3 of [WALIST(98) 1]: The Lists do not control "software" which is either: 1. ... 2. "In the public domain". Hence I believe that none of this applies to a GNU/Linux system, and is therefore not an export problem. IMNSHO. Check here for the gory details. P.S. - Personally, I wouldn't deal with Iran, and I'm a peace-loving Canadian! At least, until the 'Net becomes it's own nationality...

Actually, due to the Wassenaar Arrangement ( http://www.wassenaar.org), 32 countries have agreed to enforce the same export restrictions on encryption as the US. The agreement was signed sometime late in 1998.

Somehow this didn't get very much attention in the mainstream medias here in Norway, but due to this we got funny situations like the Opera web browser suddenly being on the weapons export list.

It's great that the us governments word is law, not only in the us, but all over the world. Too bad the rest of us don't have the right to vote there though.

Slightly off-topic, but anyway..

http://www.wassenaar.org/docs/index1.html

Second country listed. Someone forgot to tell the Wassenaar site that.