At 02:07 PM 1/23/98 PST, John M wrote:
but I hadn't heard of it. I have been meaning to buy Schneier's book...
Still waiting for my Dobb's CDROM too..
meaningful information without the other parts. Because of this, I have been asking myself, how could any one datahaven operator be held responsible for holding classified, porn, or other information if they only have a meaningless slice of it?
Perhaps this is more a legal question (even more out of my league) than anything... Any comments?
I think the essential issue is to convince the courts that running a cryptoarchive background process (distributed Eternity server) makes you a "Common Carrier", with all the legal protection you get from that classification. I agree with you and Bill that this is feasible once the legal profession gets a clue.. maybe in our lifetimes :-) The worst-case situation is a very widely dispersed government denying that kind of common-carrier status. Imagine congress signing something giving the UN that power, then declaring all encrypted-anonymous-archives illegal. Send a few blue-hats or a cruise missile to take out the non-signers. Back home: "who cares, just the UN protecting the children, so what if a Cayman casino or Togo bank gets toasted. No one was hurt, and the world is safe for imbiciles" In such a scenario you could take other steps. Steganography helps keep you from being noticed. Bursty-communications patterns are harder to stop/trace. CDROMs are readily manufactured hidden, and disguised. Perhaps the cypherpunk edition of Netscape will include anonymous remailing / traffic mixing services by default :-) David Honig honig@alum.mit.edu --------------------------------------------------- If we can prevent the government from wasting the labours of the people under the pretense of caring for them, they will be happy. -TJ