Forums Feature Suggestions SSL

Before you jump on me and tell me to use the search let me say I have. In reference to the original SSL post which can be found at:
https://forums.mirc.com/showflat.php?Cat=...h=true#Post1089
I would like to say that there are no export restrictions on SSL and so that is no reason to not add it to the script. In light of that will it ever be added or is there some other reason.

What school did you get your law degree from? Because if it is one in the US, please give me your name so I can let the ABA know you are giving FAKE legal information. The US for example 100% BANS exportation of strong cryptographic software to "terrorist nations." According to the press release issued September 16, 1998 (about a bill signed into law by President Bill Clinton) these nations include "Iran, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Sudan, North Korea and Cuba."

According to a subsequent press release made on December 16, 1999, strong cryptographic software is subject to a 1 time technical review by the Department of Commerce. Only after this review (of the source code) may the software be released overseas. Additionally additional inquiry may be made if the software is determined to be possibly used by any foreign governmental or military agency.

Unlike your claims which you stated as if you are the US President, Congress, and Judiciary, therefore making your opinion the only correct opinion, I will state that I am NOT a lawyer, I am merely reporting based on the information I am aware of. If you would like to see the relevant information yourself,
Press release December 16, 1999: http://www.bxa.doc.gov/Encryption/whpr99.htm
Export Administration Regulations Category 5 Part 2: http://w3.access.gpo.gov/bis/ear/txt/ccl5-pt2.txt
Modification to the EAR regulations to comply with the Wassenaar Arrangement List of
Dual-Use Goods and Other Technologies http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=2002_register&docid=fr06jn02-6

Seeing as how you seem to think "there are no export restrictions on SSL" the US government sure seems to have a decent amount of documentation on export restrictions... I could quote restrictions in place by other nations, but I hope this is enough to prove my point that you don't know what you are talking about.

ok well from my information it is not necassarly for a website to do anything to prevent it from going to those countries...thats the information I was given....im sorry if im wrong.

Well what is this information, and where did you get it from? The information I quoted is directly from the US government, i.e. not someone's opinion, the actual laws/regulations. If you got your info from somecryptoinfosite.com well then what you read is the author's opinions, not the actual laws.

wow just noticed you who you are....love your ircd lol....you prolly right since you have the best ircd (no this is not sarcasm).

Sorr,y i just wanted to point out code has reached 1 byte (1024) posts

! I just want to ask a few questions here:
-Where does Khaled live again?
-Since when did US law apply to the entire world (just becuase you went into Iraq and overthrew the political leader there doesn't make it legal even if he was a nasty nasty man)
-When the FBI arrests Khaled next time he is in the US under anything like the DCMA (like a certain RUSSIAN CODER...), then I'll consider this post anything but a moot point

It would just make mIRC illegal to use in the US most probably, which, is a big reason for Khaled not to do it, but hardly 100% compelling...

Ok Ok I'm sure if the US put its foot down the UK would fuss a little then kowtow, but they haven't yet...

there are mirrors in the US aren't there?

There aren't restrictions on SSL software itself, only crypotgraphic key types. Ie, certain cryptographic ciphers etc.

It was only a while back that the US opened up 128bit encryption to exportation (again, it was only to certain countries).

Thats as far as I know.

I may be wrong.

Well you are correct, mIRC itself could be exported no problem. The problem lies in that Windows itself doesn't have SSL functions (well it does, but they are horribly horribly horribly written, and horribly difficult to use), so therefore most likely mIRC would have to include another SSL library, such as OpenSSL. OpenSSL does fall under the export restrictions. So the only way around it would be you download mIRC from mirc.com then when you install it, if you place ssleay.dll and crypto.dll in the mIRC directory, mIRC now supports SSL (you'd get these files from the OpenSSL website). If mIRC were to distribute the dlls along with mIRC, then it would fall under the export restrictions.

Clockwerx has a point.

You remark about US mirrors is of little relevance as US law would only apply to US based servers in this regard. A download from Great Britain of British software is not an export from the US whatever way you look at it.

Well most of what he said is false:

Thats completely and totally wrong. ANYONE living in the US can use ANY encryption without ANY restrictions on the use. There are no laws saying you can't use encryption, or that you can't import it, in the US. There are laws about exporting it. So the whole part about illegal to use in the US is completely false.

But anyway, I'm not saying anything about what would happen in the UK, because the answer is likely nothing. Even if the US did complain to the UK they'd likely do nothing. But #1 that doesn't mean "nothing will happen" for example, mirc.com is US based. If the US government decided that mirc.com is being used to illegally export software, you can be very sure that the domain would be closed and redirected to a DoJ website. Additionally, the individual mirror owners could get in trouble. You think the mirror owners would be willing to donate their bandwidth if Khaled is asking them to perform a crime?

Oh also forgot, some countries do also ban encryption, China for instance. China does not allow encryption of any kind, therefore mIRC would be banned in China meaning mIRC just removed a potential 1 billion customers by adding SSL support.

That's true about China but then agian 99% of the landmass, where most of the people live don't even have internet access and those that do are generally restricted in every area of internet use because for some reason they pj34r that the people will be overcome by western values such as being able to do what you like when you like. I'd be surprised if China allowed it's people to use IRC. I know that some actually do though I am not sure it's lawful. Note how mIRC doesn't have a mirror there. If it was lawful they'd surely need at least one.

I don't know whether they are actually allowed to use IRC, but I know of quite a few who do... But I don't think the fact that there is no China mirror is enough to say it is illegal. India has a billion people too, they don't have a d/l mirror either, but to my knowledge they have no real restrictions on internet use.