Bush Administration Loosens Computer Export Laws

An anonymous reader contributes: "The State Department has issued this statement detailing the Bush Administration's approval for sharply raising technical specifications of exported computers to a group of more than 40 countries including Russia, China, India, Pakistan and Israel. The threshold for export without a license to Tier 3 countries will rise to cover computers capable of 190,000 million theoretical operations per second (MTOPs), up from 85,000 MTOPs now. The change is exptected to take take effect in January or February of 2002."

The sad part of this

[moosesocks]

The sad part of this is that many hardware manufactures foolishly bundle their products with cryptographic software, which remains illegal to export to many countries (and with good reason). The cryptographic software in question is typically of extreme trival nature. Take my sound card for example, why the *&$% should I not be able to download drivers for it in some of these contries? It's completely absurd.

The sad part of this is that many of these hardware companies place the cryptographic export limit on all of their drivers, simply because they are afraid of legal action from Uncle Sam.

You CAN export the hardware.... it just won't do anything with the manufacturer's official drivers.

Thankfully, kernel.org has instructions for removing these bits of code from the Linux kernel, making it legal to use anywhere there is a computer that can run it.

Re:The sad part of this

[Fat Casper]

I hadn't known that the Linux kernel was made in the US. I can see a qualm or two about sending software overseas- you know, exporting it. What I can't see is worrying that the software I'm running outside the US shouldn't have been exported from the US. Especially if that software is the Linux kernel.

Re:The sad part of this

[Arandir]

A) Acquiring Linux from a US distributor counts and a US export.

B) Many countries have import or usage restrictions on encryption.

C) Just like guns, when you restrict exportation (or importation), you only restrict the law abiding citizenry, because the criminals will export/import anyway.

D) This whole regulation of encryption thingy, regardless of which nation does it, is absurd.

Corollary to Moore's Law

[gizmo_mathboy]

I wonder if there is a corollary to Moore's Law that might apply to how often the US government raises the theoretical computation limits for exported computers to Tier 3 nations.

Bush?

[Descartes]

#include relative_ignorance_about_topic.h

I don't get it...

Maybe I don't know enough about the issue, but this seems like a good decision to me.

Bush making a good decision...I must not understand the issue fully.

Seriously, unless I'm missing something major this seems like a great idea to me. I think it's great that Bush is doing something AGAINST American opression. Yes, let them have good computers, maybe *gasp* they'll get a chance to overcome their poverty.

Although I think this maybe counter productive to Bush's agenda. I mean, if they aren't desperately poor where are we going find sweatshops to make our Old Navy fleeces!

If someone thinks I'm being really stupid and missing the point please explain why this isn't a good decision. Give me a reason to hate the president, I didn't vote for him!

Re:Bush?

[Almace]

Bush making a good decision...I must not understand the issue fully
:snip Sounds like a case of the latter
Stop being a moron and become informed on issues!
Worth reading daily [boortz.com]
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be an informed voter [lp.org]
View from right and left [foxnews.com]

Re:Bush?

[Ledge]

How dare you post links to sites containing useful & logical information in this bastion of Socialism? What are you? One of those wacky Capitalists or something? Follow the rest of the crowd and let your emotions lead you to starvation.

Re:Bush?

[Arandir]

Give me a reason to hate the president, I didn't vote for him!

You're supposed to hate the candidate you didn't vote for? No wonder this country is so fucked!

Re:Bush?

[Descartes]

No, I hate him because he's an idiot who made his way into politics through nepotism and political connections. I also didn't vote for him.

Re:Bush?

[nerdlyone]

I think one objection to exporting computer technology is the capability it gives other countries to perform, among other things, detailed nuclear bomb test simulations. Much of the US nuclear program is now performed with computer models, using computing technology we protect from other countries.

Computers allow you (or are at least an integral part) to build things like rockets. I think that is the basic reason for limiting computing exports. Maybe it is no longer an issue, so Bush is lifting the bans. However, I do seem to remember lots of republicans lambasting Clinton for relaxing some tech export laws to countries like China, which was on this Bush list too....

Re:Bush?

[Lord of Caustic Soda]

Except these bans won't be of much help so long there are other countries without the same sort of restriction. There is hardly the kind of monitoring on the movements of computers (even the supercomputers) as opposed to movement of say nuclear material (and really, how much effective monitoring of that is in place?).

I remember about 15 years ago my parents' computer company in Hong Kong was selling these Apollo Domain workstations to China thanks to the export restrictions in place then. To clear customs the computers were dismantled, and had a few critical components removed to allow them to be shipped. They just put them back together once they're in the country.

But really, those restrictions are pointless - you cannot limit the quantity of components, so how can anyone tell whether the computers are used separately or bunched together as a cluster? If they limit the export of say ultra high speed optical networking components then yes it'll put a bit of damper on building supercomputers using commodity products. Except for the fact that even gigabit network cards are commodity product made in Taiwan (heck, the Taiwanese company making them may well be manufacturing them in China...)

And what does an MTOP correspond to?

[slashdot_commentator]

How does the gov't measure or categorize an MTOP?
How many MTOPs can an AMD 1900+ do?
How many MTOPs can an IBM S/390 do?
How many MTOPs can a Sun 4500 or Starfire do?

How many terrorist countries will care about MTOP restrictions when they can cobble together 500 bargain basement PCs (say $150/machine) to make a (beowulf) super computer?

Re:And what does an MTOP correspond to?

[DarkZero]

IANAE (I Am Not An Expert), but I believe that 190,000 million theoretical operations per second would be approximately 190 first-run Mac G4 processors. So we're definitely talking about the supercomputer range. Somewhere around the computing power of a 130GHz processor system (extremely rough estimate).

Bill for Bill

[PhilHibbs]

So, Microsoft want to sell the XBox in more countries, do they?

2400 bps Modems == Munitions

[Turing Machine]

Technology marches on. I remember buying a 2400 bps modem back in the late 80s (when such things were state of the art). It came with a stern warning that exporting it to countries such as the Soviet Union, Iran, etc. was considered trafficking in arms. Hard to believe now, isn't it?

Re:190 mtops

[Hektor_Troy]

It's not 190 mtops (which would be 190 milli tops), nor is it 190 Mtops, it's 190 Gtops.