<<And finally, I have written so much only to point out that legality and enforceability are two very different things.>> Another scenario. Suppose Person A has a unix account they don't use very often. Say once every few months. Suppose person X is a hacker and breaks into Person A's account. Person X then sets up a small program that acts as a remailer, *BUT* in a very specific way. This remailer looks for a particular message, specifically the requested cryptographic software sent from person B who is a crypto author. Person X is outside of the USA and has grabbed many many accounts and has installed similar programs on each machine, which strip out all headers of forwarded mail, and encrypt/stego all traffic through them. Person X wants to get his hands on a new, but very strong cypher or interesting program that he doesn't have. So through his captured accounts whose profieles match person A's, he manages to set up the transaction and receive the software. The remailer programs have a very specific code in them that when triggered will remove all trace of their existence within the captured accounts. (ie: the program rm's itself and overwrites the original .login file to the one person X has hacked.) In other words, he gets his hands on the software, sends the kill code to one mailer which sends it on to the next and kills itself, all mailers die. The resulting trail is a long, but quickly disappearing one. Nevermind that the odds are that Person X willbe caught before he manages to set up his "network" and all that. Cliff Stoll is/was an exceptional sniffer with a lot of time on his hands talking to deaf ears until he talked through a megaphone and was taken seriously. The law in theory has been broken. In practice, Person C, F, and N, are pretty much out of luck, unless they get some other breaks leading to person X. :-) Now suppose that Person A = Person X. Would you say that person A has an aliby that his account had been hacked in and he wasn't aware of it until a few months later his password mysteriously appeared in 2600 or Phrack or elsewhere and a few people told him of the "breech" of security? :-) Okay, that's it, time for me to get some sleep. Too many theoretical, useless schemes. A true sign of sleep deprivation.