Re: [Discuss-gnuradio] Export Controls

[Robert McGwier]

In the early days of the "encryption is an armament" issue,   Phil Karn 
produced DES code that was widely distributed.   He was harassed for 
having done so.  I was asked to comment on all of this at the time 
because Phil was one of my best friends at the time (and continues to 
be)  and I worked on the other side of the fence.    I argued that it 
was an unsupportable position on the part of the U.S. government from 
practical viewpoints rather than idealistic (even though I was very 
idealistic about having my friend harassed!).  In the end,  the code was 
distributed inside the book on a floppy and as such was covered by rules 
that applied to books.  It was all just so silly.   It was inevitable 
that all that could be accomplished by the U.S. government was a 
tactical retreat.   The tactical retreat involved no more than a 
delaying action.   The delaying action lasted for a bit longer and the 
export controls were soon called into serious question and as I 
repeatedly warned,  they were soon found to be unsupportable and 
unenforceable.

My OPINION is that the USRP is not a filterbank.  If the USRP is a 
filterbank then Altera, Xilinx, Quiklogic,  etc. are going to have to 
stop selling FPGAs and CPLD's!!    The software is a filterbank. The 
software is published and therefore  already exported.  It is a fait 
d'accompli.  Matt could have a partnership outside the U.S. to produce 
the boards and sell it for him.  Since he has published all his 
designs,  they are already exported.  There is no reasonable action that 
can be taken and Matt has friends in and out of government that would 
support him.  The U.S. government, through several projects, is moving 
to actively support GnuRadio,  USRP,  etc. under the same rules that 
apply to all other members/contributors with assignments to FSF, etc.    
ITAR and other pieces of similar legislation will eventually fall under 
the weight of a) unenforceable and b) detrimental to U.S. corporate 
competitiveness IMHO.

Bob


Marcus Leech wrote:
> So, I was reading over a superficial summary of U.S. export controls 
> today, and discovered
>  that radio receivers capable of more than 1000 channels (what the 
> heck is a channel?) and
>  able to switch channels in under 1ms are export-controlled technology.
>
> It seems to me that a USRP with a Gnu Radio filterbank in the back-end 
> is such a receiver,
>  and is thus subject to  U.S.  export control.
>
> Anyone with a better view of this able to comment?


--
AMSAT VP Engineering. Member: ARRL, AMSAT-DL, TAPR, Packrats,
NJQRP/AMQRP, QRP ARCI, QCWA, FRC. ARRL SDR Wrk Grp Chairman
Time for a new motto, what should I choose?