This may be of interest to cypherpunk folk (yanked from the UK Electronic Telegraph: http://www.telegraph.co.uk). P. Madden =============================================================== The Electronic Telegraph Monday 2 October 1995 The Front Page Plan to police e-mail seems certain to fail By Adrian Berry, Science Correspondent A EUROPEAN Commission plan to police the use of secret codes in electronic mail appears certain to fail. To detect criminals, the commission is seeking legal powers to prevent people from using secret codes on the Internet which it cannot crack. Nature magazine says this would "effectively end the Internet's status as an unregulated medium for the free flow of information". The plan would require any person or company encrypting e-mail messages to leave the "secret keys" to read them in the hands of a law enforcement agency. But Dr Peter Lammer, managing director of Sophos, the Abingdon-based supplier of encryption software, said: "This plan would never work because people wishing to evade it could legitimately use layers of encryption. "Suppose I send a secret file. I would first encrypt it with my own system. I would then obey the law by encrypting it a second time with the European-approved system. "Even when the government agency had decrypted the message using the keys they had been given, they would still find that the message was totally unintelligible because of the second layer of encryption." In France, it is illegal to use any kind of encryption, and police can arrest the authors of any e-mail which they cannot understand. Codes are used by a vast range of financial companies, sending money orders and sensitive commercial details. Reply to Electronic Telegraph - et@telegraph.co.uk Electronic Telegraph is a Registered Service Mark of The Telegraph plc