Fergie's Tech Blog

VoIP Products Could Face Export Crackdown

Declan McCullagh and Anne Broache write on C|Net News:

After spending the last decade denouncing Cold War-era laws against overseas shipments of data-scrambling encryption products, technology firms thought they were off the hook when President Clinton finally eased the rules in 1999.

Well, not quite. The White House's decision seven years ago merely relaxed encryption rules in a few areas--and thousands of pages of export regulations remain on the law books today.

Now some of these obscure export regulations are troubling companies that manufacture or support voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) products capable of draping a theoretically impenetrable cloak of encryption around every conversation.

posted by Fergie @ 4/27/2006 07:18:00 AM