At 01:35 PM 12/29/96 -0800, Steve Schear wrote:
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.
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.). --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). -- Steve
When Senator Leahy's first crypto bill was proposed early this year, at first glance it appeared to help our cause. Many people around here at least gave it lukewarm support. However, it contained a section making (quote approximate) "use of encryption to thwart an investigation" a crime. I pointed out, quite loudly, that any encrypting anonymous remailer could be considered practically automatically guilty of this. In fact, the feds could simply start a sham "investigation," perhaps assisted by a phony message sent by a confederate through the remailer, and then declare that their investigation had been "thwarted." Whether such an interpretation would fly was, obviously, a question, but by the time the SC had issued its ruling the remailer's hardware would have been siezed collecting dust in some Fed warehouse for 2-3 years. Jim Bell jimbell@pacifier.com