[Tor3]

As someone who watched all of that at the time.. I believe nobody in the US felt any sword of Damocles above their heads. The net was a very different place from now. A simple automated download check was what was needed, or even just a statement. There was other kind of software as well, and I remember having to fill out a form stating that I wasn't going to re-export the software to [short-list of certain countries] before I got the actual download link. That was about it, back then.

[mratsim]

What would that check do? Check IPs?

[tptacek]

Some companies literally just provided two links, one for the US version and one for the international version. That's how not-serious this whole thing was.

Really, even back in 1995, people did understand how the Internet works. Nobody was under any illusions that you could actually control "export" of cryptographic software. If you were a US-based company that sold shrink-wrap software, you probably also filled out some paperwork once a year. For "open source" software (note: not a thing, as such, in 1995): forget about it.

[Tor3]

geoiplookup wasn't a thing until 1999 or so, plus/minus, but "whois" was, and mid-nineties the net was pretty small compared to now (for a definition of "small"). So yes, knowing where an IP address came from was a thing even then. But there were also the two-versions links mentioned by the sister comment. Among other things. This was not a big deal. Really.