1100 Parker
							Lansing MI 48912
							30 January 1994


The Honorable Bob Carr
United States House of Representatives
Washington DC  20515

Dear Representative Carr,

I urge you to support Rep. Maria Cantwell's bill HR 3627 * 
Export Controls on Cryptography Software.  This bill liberalizes 
United States export controls on cryptographic computer 
software.  

There is a growing demand for software employing cryptographic 
techniques.  At the same time, the world continues to "get 
smaller", as multinational corporations routinely does business 
across national borders, with their own overseas branches and 
with each other.  Currently, U. S. corporations and other 
entities are significantly inconvenienced by the difficulty they 
have in deploying overseas many types of computer software.  
These days, even ordinary garden-variety "shrink-wrapped" 
business software may employ cryptographic techniques for some 
functions, thereby causing the entire software package to be 
export controlled.  Users of such software packages either must 
undergo the painful task of applying for and hoping to obtain 
permission to export, or must forego using the software 
corporation-wide.

Also, U. S. software companies are currently limited in their 
ability to participate in the worldwide software market due to 
export controls.  Special "crippled" versions of products must 
be made for foreign customers.  Not only is this practice 
wasteful, but it displeases overseas customers.  The result is 
significant revenue loss for the U. S. software industry.

I am personally familiar with the difficulties faced by a 
Michigan State University research project involving a 
confidential survey of multinational U. S. corporations.  The 
corporations involved wished to protect the confidentiality of 
the results being sent back to the researchers; hence, the use 
of cryptography was required.  Because some of the corporations 
were returning survey results from overseas offices, there was 
unnecessary difficulty and expense in obtaining and deploying 
software for this purpose.

To those familiar with the current state of cryptography, the 
current U. S. export laws are rather laughable:  high-quality 
cryptographic software is readily available from foreign 
sources, so only Americans are really inconvenienced by the 
American laws.

I hope you will help increase America's global competitiveness 
by supporting H. R. 3627.

Sincerely,



Mark Riordan