Encryption policies of Fidnet, etc.

[remail@tamsun.tamu.edu]

Forwarded from alt.cyberspace:
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->> Joseph T Dickinson was mumbling something about Encryption <<-

 JTD> It is illegal to encrypt messages period.
 JTD> E-mail encryption is illegal

Depends on your network and where you live.

It is illegal to use PGP in the United States due to its use of a
copyrighted algoritm.  It is *NOT* illegal to use it anywhere else in 
the world.  Other encryption methods are legal.

In Fidonet (the largest *amatuer* mail network), it is against policy to
encrypt 'echomail' (Fido version of newsgroups), but perfectly 
acceptable to encrypt *direct* netmail (Fido email delivered directly to
the recieving system without regard to its location).  Routed netmail 
(email passed from system to system before eventually arriving at its 
destination) may be encrypted provided each sysop whose node the message
passes through agrees that the message may be encrypted, otherwise, it 
has to be sent en claire.

On RIME (Relaynet International Mail Exchange, the *2nd* largest amatuer
run network), email is regularly encrypted as part of the networking and
routing software in use by the network.  Sending routed, reciever-only 
mail is not only common, but *encouraged*, since it cuts down on the 
overhead of the other systems in the net.  You'd have to look at the 
network's topology to see why; it's basically a 'tree' formation in 
which nodes at the bottom feed their newsgroups up to the topstars and 
recieve them from the topstars. 

Keven


... Get the facts first - you can distort them later!
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