At 12:18 AM 11/8/96 -0800, Greg Broiles wrote:

At 04:43 PM 11/7/96 -0800, Tim May wrote:

...

* Intent. It's hard to imagine someone being imprisoned for using cryptography, except perhaps in wartime conditions. I may be wrong. Also, there are deep Constitutional issues we haven't been much discussing.

One change I suspect we'll see sooner or later on the Federal side is an amendment of the Sentencing Guidelines to include an upward adjustment for the use of encryption to frustrate law enforcement efforts. This wouldn't be a conviction for using crypto, but would result in harsher penalties for people convicted of other crimes where they happened to use crypto in a way connected with the crime. (Keeping child porn or records of a forbidden business on an encrypted disk volume, using PGPfone to conspire across long distances, etc.)

As an example, less than a year ago, Congress directed the Sentencing Commission (a sub-branch of the federal Judiciary) to amend the guidelines to enhance the penalties by at least two levels for using a computer to advertise or "ship" a visual depiction of child porn. Pub. L. 104-71, Sec. 2 (12/23/95).

... I myself have heard of people getting tougher sentences for monitoring police bands during the commission of a crime. It seems that using a scanner while committing a crime is itself a crime, at least around here.