“Encryption programs are protected by the First Amendment and
can be freely shipped overseas, a federal appeals court ruled in a
landmark decision Thursday.
“Claiming President Clinton’s executive order limiting the
export of such software strikes “deep into the heartland of the
First Amendment,” a 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals panel ruled 2-1
that the regulation was unconstitutional. The ruling does not apply
to off-the-shelf executable programs, but only human-readable
“source code” instructions.”