It is still not clear just which countries will benefit from Sun Microsystems Inc’s SunScreen security products – certainly not users in France where government-imposed rules on encryption are the toughest. Sun president and chief executive Scott McNealy said it would depend on export licences, and would have to be done on a country by country and company by company basis. While the US government tries to make up its mind on encryption – products tend to get classified as military weapons – McNealy warned that once it is there, it would be hard to get rid of. Of course they could make private encryption illegal, but lots of things have been made illegal and are still around, he said.
