Re: MacPGP and AOL

[Anonymous <mg5n+eabm226579fzrzhm4evs3zzce7h9zk@andrew.cmu.edu>]

Reuben Halper sez:

> AOL will not allow me to upload MacPGP on the basis that there is a
> court case pending against the author, and therefore it should not be
> allowed.  My question is since the court case is pending why can't they
> allow it on until a verdict has been reached?  Is this common for
> commercial online services or ftp sites to ban it?

Sadly, yes.  We've been through similiar situations with other online services.

But maybe this opens up some stego possibilities.  What if some public-spirited
cypherpunks were to write some non-crypto-related software, say a simple PD
game, hide PGP in it, and put it up on all the online services.  The program
could have a hidden bit of code, that when given the proper password, would
desteg and decrypt PGP.  Something with lots of graphic images, large mazes,
or other large files would work well.  It'd probably take a while before the
net.cops figured out what was going on, and by the time anyone tried to squish
it, the program would (hopefully) have been handed down enough times that
it'd be impossible to trace it back to the original author.  Plus you'd have
thousands of people uploading it all over without even realizing what they
had.  Any takers? :)