This was on slashdot today, so probably several people have seen it
already. The South African government passed a law (apparently two
month ago) which requires all crypto providers to register with the
government for some fee. The law can be found under
http://co.za/ect/a25-02.pdf (this is ridiculously large, seems to be a
bitmap of some scanned-in document or such). The critical section is
Chapter V, on pages 18 and 19 of said pdf. Specifically the law does
not require that the provider resides in South Africa, it is enough to
provide it to persons present in South Africa. I am neither familiar
with international law nor with South African law, so could some
clueful people please comment on how this will affect Debian? Is
providing crypto software on the internet already subject to this law
or does it only apply if one ships CDs? Do we have any South African
developers or what would be the consequences for the Debian project,
i.e. would we risk to be arrested when traveling to South Africa?
Lukas
--
Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious.
-- Oscar Wilde
