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Re: Anonymous remailers and Leahy bill
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At 10:26 AM 3/7/96 -0500, A. Padgett Peterson P.E. Information Security wrote:
>
>>I am assuming they fix the obvious error in the phrasing above.
>
>Until they do, we can only guess at the intent.
>
>>"Thanks for the use of your nifty anonymous remailer. Under a different
>>name, I intend to use this remailer (along with others) to transmit child
>>pornography, plot terrorism, and do all of my drug deals. You've made my
>>life so much more secure!"
>
>At this point, Bob has no choice other than to reply with: "I assume you are
>joking however since what you have stated is in violation of numerous laws,
>we have no choice other than to disable your account. If we find that
>illegal acts have been committed using this remailer, we will have no choice
>other than to report such actions."
Wouldn't help "Bob" in the least. And you didn't read what I wrote very
carefully, either: Notice that I said, "under a different name." In other
words, the source of the note does not identify the user name under which
the illegal activity is promised to occur. Cancelling this particular
fellow's account does NOTHING to prevent the illegal activity from
occurring by other, unidentified users, and "Bob" knows it.
Moreover, such a statement (by Bob) would be considered deliberately
ineffective: Any anonymous encrypted remailer operator is perfectly aware
that his remailer can be used for illegal purposes without him ever finding
out. If the law was written carefully enough, that mere knowledge would
make it a crime to continue to operate that remailer unless its use could be
monitored and verified to be legal. Technically, encryption would not be
illegal, but using encryption would open one up to harrassment by
government. This would become a de-facto ban, at least for whoever was on
the government's "shit list" that week.
>Anyone stupid enough to make a statement like this deserves to be disabled.
Anyone stupid enough to misinterpret what I clearly wrote above deserves to
be lambasted.
>>At that point, Bob is GUILTY of violation of the Leahy bill, because his
>>encrypted anonymous remailer:
>
>No, if Bob were to follow the above scenario, he would already be guilty of
>terminal stupidity.
Poor response, and inaccurate too.
>>So maybe the word gets out, occasionally. At that point, usage of anonymous
>>remailers declines, and people willing to risk operating one declines. A
>>few come up which are run by the Feds, which log anyone who attempts to use
>>it...
>
>Declines ? They are only protection from amateurs. Do you really not
>believe that everything in and out of anon.penet.fi & others is not
>monitored *at the ISP/carrier level* ?
I am well aware of the possibilities. But you just destroyed your own
argument: If the government is already capable of tracing such messages,
and is doing so, it is presumably doing so illegally, or this tracing SHOULD
be illegal. If the government is already doing that, then we'd damn well
look VERY carefully at any new bills that are proposed to regulate
encryption, because we have far more to fear from them than they currently
let on.
> Warmly,
>
Padgett
I'm disgusted by your "Warmly, Padgett."
While I don't sympathize with their motivations, the "red-hunters" of the
early 1950's had a term, "pink" to describe a person who was unduly
sympathetic to the Communist cause: A person who was just a bit too cozy
with their philosophy. Not quite "red," but...
In the 1990's encryption debates, you're a bit too "pink" on the
pro-government side for me.
With generous amounts of disgust,
Jim Bell
[email protected]
.....Klaatu Burada Nikto
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