At 10:41 PM 9/3/96 -0500, Jon Lebkowsky wrote:

The terms "responsibility" and "accountability" are misused, which is unfortunate, since I think we'd all argue in favor of taking responsibility for our speech/actions in a positive sense. The negative is in asking me to sacrifice my freedom because some few behave irresponsibly. This is like setting an illogical default, assuming that it's a preventive, but it prevents nothing.

Getting beyond this discussion of EFF, has any global entity discussed making remailers illegal?

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. True, the USG isn't quite a "global entity" (even though it has a nasty habit of behaving like it!), but along with Europe (which would presumably treaty with USG any such restrictions) it's the next closest thing. Jim Bell jimbell@pacifier.com