I was wondering how long it would take after this post went up on Slashdot about the State Department authorizing Scaled Composites to share suborbital spaceship technology with Virgin Galactic until some know-it-all dork reminded everyone that these were the same evil American rules that also treat cryptography as a munition.

Answer: 10 minutes.

The "ITAR makes crypto a munition" meme is utterly unkillable. Never mind that the Clinton Administration, specifically the first Clinton Administration, transferred jurisdiction over commercial encryption from State to the Commerce Department in 1996 and that there have been lord knows how many decontrols since then.  Apparently, if you're the kind of guy with a Bruce Schneier poster on your dorm room wall, letting go of the idea that you're a badass arms exporter every time you insist on hauling along your laptop on the family vacation to Aruba is much more difficult than anyone could have imagined.

Someone tell these guys, too.  Or make better use of your time by reading the Space.com article that prompted the Slashdot navel-gazing competition in the first place.