Re: "Structuring" of Communications a Felony?

[azur@netcom.com (Steve Schear)]

>At 10:57 PM -0800 12/28/96, Lucky Green wrote:
>
>>IMHO, this closes the door on the foreign contracting loophole used by C2
>>and others. It is now illegal for US persons to finance or contract out
>>overseas crypto development, since doing so will obviously assist in
>>proliferation. While not unexpected (I offered a bet on Cypherpunks that
>>this would happen. Nobody took the bet.), this provision sets a dangerous
>>precedence. The technical assistance prohibitions of the past have been
>>transformed into general prohibitions against "financing, contracting,
>>service, support, transportation, freight forwarding, or employment".
>>
>>Again, IANAL.
>
>Nor am I, but I have a "prediction" to make in the spirit of Lucky's types
>of predictions of doom.
>
>I predict that we will see within two years a law making it illegal to
>"structure communications" with the intent to avoid traceability,
>accountability, etc.
>
>This would be along the lines of the laws making it illegal to "structure"
>financial transactions with the (apparent) intent to avoid or evade certain
>laws about reporting of income, reporting of transactions, etc.
>
[snip]
>
>How long before the U.S. Code declares "attempting to obscure or hide the
>origin of a communication" to be a felony? That would rule out orninary
>mail without return adresses, but I think there are ample signs we're
>already moving toward this situation (packages that could be bombs
>putatively require ID, talk of the Postal Service handling the citizen-unit
>authentication/signature system, etc.).
>
[snip]
>You heard it here.
>
>--Tim May

Tim, I think that this is highly unlikely.  The SC has ruled repeatedly
that anonymous speech is a foundation of American politics (e.g., the
Federalist Papers).

Care to make this prediction a bet?

-- Steve