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My life as an international arms courier Matt Blaze January, 1995 Under an obscure provision of US law, devices and computer programs that use encryption techniques to hide information from prying eyes and ears are considered ``munitions'' and subject to the same rules that govern the international arms trade. In particular, taking such items out of this country requires the approval of the State Department, which decides whether exporting something might endanger national security. In the past, these restrictions were of little concern to the average citizen; encryption found most of its application in military and diplomatic communications equipment. Today, however, growing concern over electronic fraud and privacy means that encryption techniques are starting to find their way into more conventional commercial products like laptop computers and portable phones. Mostly to find out what the process was like, I recently applied for a temporary export license for a portable telephone encryption product that I wanted to take with me on a business trip to England and Belgium. The item in question is more properly called a ``secure telephone''. This is a little box that scrambles telephone conversations to protect them against eavesdroppers; this sort of protection is sometimes important when discussing confidential business matters from faraway places. The particular model I bought was already approved for export; it employs a cipher algorithm that the government has already decided is not a threat to national security even should it fall into the hands of some rogue government. This model is aimed primarily, I presume, at international business travelers who want to communicate in a reasonably secure manner with their home offices in the states. In other words, a typical user buys two of them, leaving one at the home office and carrying the other when traveling abroad. The options that came with my device included a James Bond-ish looking acoustic coupler and handset to facilitate its connection to the hardwired phones that are still common in European hotel rooms. It turns out that there was recently some discussion in the government about exempting products like my secure phone from the licensing paperwork requirements. Unfortunately, however, this exemption never actually took effect. So even though the device I had was already approved for sale abroad, I still needed to get a temporary export license before I could take it with me. But I was assured that ``this is an easy, routine process''. Well, sure enough, about two weeks before I was to leave I got back my official US State Department ``license for the temporary export of unclassified defense articles''. So far, so good. From what I was able to figure out by reading the license (and having a few conversations with an export lawyer), I'm required to leave from an international airport with a Customs agent present (no problem there, although Customs is geared to arriving, rather than departing, travelers). At the airport, I'm supposed to fill out a form called a ``shipper's export declaration'' (SED) on which I have to declare that ``these commodities are authorized by the US government for export only to Belgium and the United Kingdom. They may not be resold, transshipped, or otherwise disposed of in any country, either in their original form or incorporated into other end-items without the prior written approval of the US Department of State''. Then I'm to present the SED and export license to a Customs official at the airport before I leave. The Customs officer is supposed to take my SED and endorse my license to show what I'm actually taking out of the country. On the way back in, I'm supposed to ``declare'' my item at Customs (even though it was manufactured in the US) and show them my license, and they're supposed to endorse the license again as proof that I have, in fact, returned the ``defense article'' to the safety of the United States. The first hitch I ran into was that no one could actually tell me where I could get an SED form. But when I called Custo
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