Spencer Mullen writes:
It would seem that remailers shouldn't be anymore accountable for passing on illicit pornography than the postal services are today.
??
I'll take the "??" as an invitation for comment. Package delivery services like UPS and Federal Express *do* have immunity from prosecution based on what they carry, but this is in exchange for allowing inspection of packages under specified circumstances. Thus, if the DEA suspects a package contains cocaine, it can be inspected, and the shipper will most likely cooperate in resealing the package and continuing the shipment. This is part of "common carrier" status. (I don't have any cites for this, as I'm not a lawyer. But this topic has come up many times on the Net, and the consensus of knowledgeable people is that "participation in legitimate law enforcement investigations" is part and parcel, so to speak, of being a common carrier.) Caveat: I'm not claiming any of this is as it should be, etc. Just stating facts as I understand them. The implications for crypto are unknown, but between the Digital Telephony Bill mandating easy tapping access and the various key escrow schemes, I expect that a remailer network which cannot possibly cooperate may face legal problems. (One scenario: Digital Telephony III, in 1997, mandates that all mail sites must keep records of incoming and outgoing packets, and where they mailed them to, and must keep explicit mapping between incoming and outgoing packets. These records must be available for inspection, with a $10,000 a day fine fro noncompliance. With such a mandate, the authorities could go to each and every remailer they find and demand these records. A wrinkle: what about *offshore* remailers? Ah, things then get very interesting.) --Tim May -- .......................................................................... Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay@netcom.com | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero 408-688-5409 | knowledge, reputations, information markets, W.A.S.T.E.: Aptos, CA | black markets, collapse of governments. Higher Power: 2^859433 | Public Key: PGP and MailSafe available. "National borders are just speed bumps on the information superhighway."