On Thu, 12 Jan 1995, Russell Nelson wrote:

I really *don't* think that New York State plans to ban encryption, not now and not over this issue anyway. His thrust is 1) to have the legal authority to sufficiently punish someone who goes after children (which they don't have now), and 2) to educate guardians about the risks of untoward communications from adults to children.

But what happens if, say, a minor is solicited for sex when they are pretending to be older than they are ? Or if the solicitation comes via a remailer ? Or a minor with a grudge fakes email to show that someone attempted to get them to agree to sex/picture-taking or whatever ? Once you pass laws making some forms of communication illegal, you're immediately getting into dodgy territory requiring is-a-person credentials and so on. That isn't neccesarily a problem if it's voluntary (e.g. your kids accounts might be set up to only accept mail from people who're certified to be under 18 or whatever), but governments are unlikely to do things that way. Mark