Re: Leahy bill nightmare scenario?

[tcmay@got.net (Timothy C. May)]

At 11:12 AM 3/11/96, Gary Howland wrote:

>Dan Weinstein writes:

>> If I rent cars, someone might one day use a car rented from me in a
>> robbery.  Does that make my an accessary?  NO.
>
>This is an unfair analogy.  Now if you had said that you rented cars
>without asking for proof of identification, thus making your car hire
>centre very useful to robbers, that may more closely resemble the
>anon-remailer situation.

If a hotel rents a room to someone who commits a crime in that room, e.g.,
prostitution, drug use, plotting to blow up a building, can the hotel be
seized under the asset forfeiture laws?

Not that I have heard.

Does it matter if the hotel fails to extensively check identification?
(Hint: Rarely have I had my ID checked. Sometimes they ask for a driver's
license and write down the number...and we all know how easy it is to get
fake DLs. Mostly they don't.)

If I lend my chain saw to my next-door neighbor without confirming his
identity, and he carves up his wife, am I liable? Not in these parts.

(If I lend my chain saw to a ranting, foaming maniac, am I liable? Perhaps.)

If I let someone use my telephone without confirming his identity, am I
liable for crimes committed with this phone?

This last example is, I submit,  a nearly perfect parallel to anonymous
remailers. And not because the telephone system is a "common carrier," but
because of scienter: I have no knowledge, and cannot be expected to have
knowledge, of crimes committed with my phone.

If I have visitors at my house, perhaps at a party, and I let a stranger go
ahead and make a call from the phone in a bedroom, for example, and he
plans a drug deal, can my house be automatically seized? Not that I have
ever heard about. Maybe so, but if this ever happens, expect an outcry
against the asset forfeiture laws that will make Linda Thompson's protest
seem tame.

Now if I operate a pay phone and encourage dealers and pimps to use it,
then maybe the public nuisance, RICO, or "crack house" laws can be used to
shut it down. (The public nuisance laws are what I would look to to see
remailers shut down, which will just move them offshore, of course. Absent
laws about sending encrypted packets outside the country, nothing can be
done.)

And, finally, packages and letters may be mailed anonymously. This is what
pre-paid stamps are all about. And I've used non-U.S. Postal Service
package delivery sytems without providing identification. Can Federal
Express have their assets seized because of "anonymous remailing"?
(Quibblers will no doubt cite laws requiring FedEx to "cooperate," demand
ID, etc.)

--Tim May

Boycott "Big Brother Inside" software!
We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, we know that that ain't allowed.
---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
tcmay@got.net  408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA  | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
Higher Power: 2^756839 - 1  | black markets, collapse of governments.
"National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."