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Re: What is the EFF doing exactly?
At 10:33 PM 9/3/96 -0800, jim bell wrote:
>At 10:41 PM 9/3/96 -0500, Jon Lebkowsky wrote:
>>The terms "responsibility" and "accountability" are misused, which is
>>unfortunate, since I think we'd all argue in favor of taking responsibility
>>for our speech/actions in a positive sense. The negative is in asking me to
>>sacrifice my freedom because some few behave irresponsibly. This is like
>>setting an illogical default, assuming that it's a preventive, but it
>>prevents nothing.
>>
>>Getting beyond this discussion of EFF, has any global entity discussed
>>making remailers illegal?
>
>The Leahy crypto bill introduced early this year made (paraphrasing) "the
>use of encryption to thwart a law-enforcement investigation illegal." I
>immediately pointed out that while this wouldn't make _encrypted_ remailers
>illegal, per se, effectively it would because the moment an investigation
>(even a phony or trumped-up one) is started and is "thwarted" by the
>encryption used, the remailer operator became guilty of a crime.
Is that true? Or is it that the individual user would be guilty of a crime?
The real problem, to me, is that the remailer operator might be required to
breach anonymity; cf the decision in Finland that led Julf to squash
anon.penet.fi.
--
Jon Lebkowsky <[email protected]> FAX (512)444-2693 http://www.well.com/~jonl
Electronic Frontiers Forum, 6PM PDT Thursdays <http://www.hotwired.com/eff>
"No politician can sit on a hot issue if you make it hot enough."--Saul Alinsky