Marc Horowitz says:
I have to disagree with Lance here.
No one can send any `bomb' through mere text, and to compare harassing mail (which is definitely not to be condoned) to it is to expose your naive and self-serving view of the matter.
I know people who would probably rather receive an explosive in the mail than receive email from certain individuals, or about certain subjects.
To begin with, the ban on encrypted messages makes no sense because people who do not have the key to read the messages can obviously not receive them, and even people who do have the key must make an active effort to read the messages. I will ignore that for the moment, however, and address this pervasive notion that words can cause more harm than letter bombs. I'm sorry, but its completely irrational to prefer to be killed by an explosive over getting email from someone you hate. This insane notion that words are somehow worse than physical blows has to stop. It leads to insane conclusions, among others, the conclusion that we must all be restricted in our speech at all times lest we offend other's feelings. This is the same argument that fundamentalist christians who would like to ban certain books from our libraries would use -- that harm can be caused by people accidently reading the books. This is no speculative notion -- the argument was once actually used regularly in our country. The real world contains lots of harmful things. People who are so incapable of handling a threatening letter or an insulting piece of mail that they would prefer to die from a letter bomb are unlikely to be able to deal with the sights and sounds they will see on an ordinary street in a big city. They are too fragile for this world and likely should be locked up for their own good until psychiatrists can manage to heal them, as the preference of death to being offended is suicidal and the incapacity to deal with the real world will obviously cripple them. The rest of the world should not be constrained to handle the needs of these obviously very mentally unbalanced individuals. Perry Metzger