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Re: Anonymous remailers and Leahy bill
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At 08:03 PM 3/7/96 -0500, Jonathan Rochkind wrote:
>At 5:22 PM 03/07/96, jim bell wrote:
>>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.
>
>How is this differnet then me calling up AOL and saying "Using a friend's
>account whose password I have, I'm going to send child pornography out to
>many people sometime tommorow"?
It may be similarly illegal, but it's still a bit different. See below.
>
>I don't know if it is or not, but hopefully it's the same. As long as
>anonymous remailers are legally identical to ISPs, I think we don't have to
>worry too much becuase ISPs are now serious money-making businesses with
>lots to spend on lobbying and legal fees, and will fight any laws that
>effect them such.
It is occasionally argued that business doesn't like regulation. That
observation is misleading: It turns out that _big_ business actually
benefits, at least differentially, from regulation: If it costs a fixed
amount to keep a corporation on the right side of the regulation, that's the
same for a tiny company and a large company, in fixed dollars. However, as
a fraction of sales, it can be vastly different. "Big business" is well
aware that regulations keep down the competition. "Big business" wants JUST
ENOUGH regulation to achieve its ends of reducing competition, but without
being too expensive for itself.
> Whether this Leahy bill is passed or not, clearly AOL
>is not going to quietly shut down their entire company after receiving such
>a phone call. And they can't really do anything to stop the theoretical
>next-day child porn mailing either.
One big advantage that AOL, or for that matter ANY online service has, is
that its customers (or the customers of a competing big service) will be on
any jury. They are familiar with how such an organization operates, and
they can sympathize a bit with the difficulty of monitoring all this
material. They may, in fact, want to KEEP AOL from doing this monitoring,
and thus they'll cut AOL some slack when it comes to any decision.
Prosecutors know this, judges know this, etc. In this case, familiarity
breeds tolerance.
Encrypted anonymous remailers, however, are more of a shady, fly-by-night
sort of operation. The average AOL user may not even have HEARD about them,
let alone actually used them or depended on their continued existence. It
is far less likely that a juror will understand why they exist, and will be
more likely to think the remailer is responsible for any illegalities
committed with that service. Besides, any prosecutor is fully aware that
AOL has enough money to defend itself fully, and has the ability to generate
angry publicity from its customers against its harassers. Essentially by
definition, an anonymous remailer can't count on anyone stepping forward and
saying, "I use this encrypted anonymous remailer a lot..."
>So it would be beneficial to present anonymous remailers as just another
>sort of internet service provider. And we only really have to worry when
>there are laws that seem to apply to anon remailers but not AOL.
On the contrary: It is the application of any such law which is critical,
and that can't be accurately gauged until the law is actually passed and it
is in the hands of prosecutors. I'm not willing to give them that chance.
I'm certain they will abuse the law.
But if you doubt their motivations, I recommend that you try to have that
section removed. If that section was put there just as a "throwaway," they
won't squawk. But I predict they will be extremely reluctant to remove it,
because that's exactly the portion of the bill they really want. They don't
want you to know this, of course. Please test them.
Jim Bell
[email protected]
Klaatu Burada Nikto
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