At 3:02 AM 9/4/96, James A. Donald wrote:

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The Leahy crypto bill introduced early this year made (paraphrasing) "the use of encryption to thwart a law-enforcement investigation illegal." I immediately pointed out that while this wouldn't make _encrypted_ remailers illegal, per se, effectively it would because the moment an investigation (even a phony or trumped-up one) is started and is "thwarted" by the encryption used, the remailer operator became guilty of a crime. ... I believe that judges have a policy of interpreting deliberately ambiguous statutes in whatever way makes the most sense. The only sensible interpretation of Leahy's bill is that it criminalizes strong remailers, that it is intended to punish ANYONE, not just

At 10:33 PM 9/3/96 -0800, jim bell wrote: the criminals themselves, who obstructs investigations.

As the recent discussion of knives, switchblades, and throwing stars showed, such ambiguous laws are often used to keep the coloreds down. But how will cops and local prosecutors know which users of remailers are colored? Answer: the race bit must be set on all posts. --Klaus (P.S. More than one of you has expressed anger to me that I am using the term "colored." As in "what the coloreds are doing." I use this term deliberately, because the perfectly fine term "black" is now being replaced by the ultra-awkward and stupid-sounding "person of color." We have even seen this in posts to this list. Here in Santa Cruz, the terms in use are: people of color, students of color, lesbians of color, etc. Only about 17.32% of the entire population is _not_ "persons of color." I say, "Fuck it...they want to be called "colored," then, fine, they're "colored."") We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, I know that that ain't allowed. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay@got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Licensed Ontologist | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."