U.S. District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel ruled in favor of an Illinois professsor of mathematics who attempted to publish his encryption code on the Internet. Mathematician Daniel Berstein's encryption program, called Snuffle, converts a readable message into a code that can be read only by using his decryption program, Unsnuffle.
The State Department initially decied in 1993 that the programs as well as an acedmic paper Berstein wrote to discribe his ideas were military articles that required licenses for him to communicate them abroad.
The department withdrew that designation for the academic paper in 1995 but left it in place for the encryption programs. That decision prompted the lawsuit.
The judge's ruling is not binding outside California's Northern District, which includes Silicon Valley. Another federal judge in Washington, D.C., upheld the export ban ealier this year.
Patel stopped short of forbiding the government to place any restrictions on the export of encryption programs. But she said the current restrictions went too far and were unconstitutional.
There are no time limits on the State Department office that makes the licensing decisions, no standards for denial of a license and no provisions for appealing a denial, the judge noted.
She said the licesnsing system was "a paraigm of standardless discretion" and "an unconstitutional prior restraint in violation of the First Amendment."
Patel noted the impact on businesses, which have complained that government restrictions hamber their ability to protect sensitive data transmissions.