PGP's SMTP enforcer and ISPs
Recently, my ISP became the victim of spammers. Their response, like many other ISPs, is to block port 25 for all their dialup users. This means that all outgoing email must be routed through their mail server. Now that PGP has an SMTP enforcers, and that others will eventually follow with a S/MIME equivalent, we are literally an executive order away from an effective (if not 100% complete) ban on "inappropriate" encryption on email communications. All it would take is a national emergency, like the next war against Saddam Hussein, or a law that does not treat ISPs like common carriers and holds them liable for what their users do. And the worst thing of all is that most people won't even notice it. Hell, I was the only person on my end to notice that my ISP had blocked port 25. -- Phelix, "perfect paranoia is perfect awareness"
At 04:47 AM 11/06/1997 GMT, phelix@vallnet.com wrote:
Now that PGP has an SMTP enforcers, and that others will eventually follow with a S/MIME equivalent, we are literally an executive order away from an effective (if not 100% complete) ban on "inappropriate" encryption on email communications.
Nah - private speech isn't something the President has authority over. (I'm assuming you mean that kind of executive order, as opposed to "the folks who run my ISP cut off port 25 by fiat and can cut off crypto too".) Besides, about all the PGP SMTP enforcer does is look for -----BEGIN PGP ENCRYPTED STUFF----- or the equivalent binary formats, which is easy for anybody to write a filter for, but very tough to scale the average sendmail daemon to look for, and it's easy enough to steganize your way around (Jon Callas recommends using -----BEGIN ZZZ ENCRYPTED STUFF----- to avoid the PGP SMTP filters :-) Thanks! Bill Bill Stewart, stewarts@ix.netcom.com Regular Key PGP Fingerprint D454 E202 CBC8 40BF 3C85 B884 0ABE 4639
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phelix＠vallnet.com