Yes, indeed the PA law is for real!
Well folks, you can go view the new PA law yourselves at URL http://moose.erie.net/~italo/rssb655.html PA Senate Bill 655 was signed into law on June 13, 1995, and it does appear to make non-logged anonymous remailers illegal. -Thomas
Rick Busdiecker (rfb@lehman.com) wrote:
I'm guessing that you're referring to this part of the law:
(1) [makes or possesses any instrument, apparatus, equipment or] makes, distributes, possesses, uses or assembles an unlawful telecommunication device or modifies, alters, programs or reprograms a telecommunication device designed, adapted or which can be used: . . . (ii) to conceal or to assist another to conceal from any [supplier of telecommunications] telecommunicationservice provider or from any lawful authority the existence or place of origin or of destination of any telecommunication; or
Well, given that I haven't seen any Bell employees rushing to tear out payphones, I suspect that if it ever went to court, they'd have to show intent to commit or assist fraud. Since anonymous remailers (and payphones, prepaid calling cards, etc) have legitimate uses, they can't prove you were intending to assist crime by providing those services. There's also the ECPA protections...
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Date: Fri, 13 Oct 1995 18:42:35 -0400 (EDT) From: Tom Edwards <tedwards@access.digex.net> Well folks, you can go view the new PA law yourselves at URL http://moose.erie.net/~italo/rssb655.html PA Senate Bill 655 was signed into law on June 13, 1995, and it does appear to make non-logged anonymous remailers illegal. I'm guessing that you're referring to this part of the law: (1) [makes or possesses any instrument, apparatus, equipment or] makes, distributes, possesses, uses or assembles an unlawful telecommunication device or modifies, alters, programs or reprograms a telecommunication device designed, adapted or which can be used: . . . (ii) to conceal or to assist another to conceal from any [supplier of telecommunications] telecommunicationservice provider or from any lawful authority the existence or place of origin or of destination of any telecommunication; or IANAL, but this sure sounds like one could make the case that an ISP that allowed users to send mail to arbitrary addresses, e. g. xxx@anon.penet.fi, would be `guilty' of assisting another to conceal the place of origin and/or destination of a telecommunication. I'd imagine that the authorities would be a bit more likely to go after anonymous-remailer@xxx.net however. In fact, I wonder if the fact that mail to rfb@cmu.edu is forwarded to rfb@lehman.com couldn't be construed as `assistance' if I happened to receive mail at that address through penet. Sigh . . . . -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBMH/p8JNR+/jb2ZlNAQHnTgP/eycb4eJaVDVw9UTmb82ErzR29dnGSrvT cdaGq8HoUYV1fjwzfD6aW3B8tiPkM9tcpbV5ck3LnNU7Ylgq3S8T8Zg/JNkdf0jE J8+KO8HhONNjBgA4hRcEkrnZrHwu3S6BknxgQ+ERCASj7XRybk62pkWGciuoUZyp FfFtv6FAS1E= =vIYn -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- Rick Busdiecker Please do not send electronic junk mail! net: rfb@lehman.com or rfb@cmu.edu PGP Public Key: 0xDBD9994D www: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs.cmu.edu/user/rfb/http/home.html send mail, subject "send index" for mailbot info, "send pgp key" gets my key A `hacker' is one who writes code. Breaking into systems is `cracking'.
participants (3)
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ghio＠cmu.edu -
Rick Busdiecker -
Tom Edwards