At 08:26 PM 4/5/96 -0800, Timothy C. May wrote:

Jail term for contempt of court has certain resemblances to trial by ordeal: if after some period of time of ordeal one has not talked, the ordeal is over.

Also, such a penalty will be pretty rare. One doesn't stop driving because one might be killed in a car accident. The number of people who will be jailed annually for contempt for "failure to decrypt" will always be small and a rapidly declining percentage of total world transactions will lead to such jailing (as transaction numbers double and redouble as more of the world's people enter the Market and the Net). Coercion is a dull tool because people have an incentive to avoid it. Reward is a sharp tool because people seek it out. One of the reasons markets beat governments. DCF "Well, say what you will but Right Wing Mad Bombers kill more people than Left Wing Mad Bombers."