At 23:12 1/24/96, Michael Froomkin wrote:
If you are a government strategist, you might think, Why not make people strictly liable for, e.g., any crimes planned with their remailers? And make ISPs strictly liable for crimes panned or executed on their systems?
But if all traffic is required to be encrypted which is going through the remailer or ISP, how can they be liable for what they cannot possibly know? This will be the state of the net in a few years. Can a courier be held liable for delivering encrypted documents that contained illegal information or were used in a crime? I don't think so. Only if he knew there was something illegal going on. How are remailers any different? What about a car rental agency that rented a car to a criminal with bogus ID that is used to commit a crime. Was Ryder held liable for the Oklahoma bombing? No. In these two situations, people are in business and profitting by providing a service that can be used to commit crimes. Shouldn't they be shut down too if remailers are. I don't know where the idea got started that the govenment has it within its power to make illegal any new technology that *can* and *is* used to commit crimes. It is a pretty scary one though. Weld Pond - weld@l0pht.com - http://www.l0pht.com/ L 0 p h t H e a v y I n d u s t r i e s Technical archives for the people - Bio/Electro/Crypto/Radio