The proposal would make telecoms operators responsible for decrypting traffic and supplying it to governments when asked. It would also `change national laws to enable judicial authorities to chase hackers across borders'.

However, `it remains possible that cryptography is available to the public which cannot be deciphered,' his document says. `This might lead to the conclusion to put restrictions on the possession, distribution, or use of cryptography.'

This should prove about as effective as the current French or Russian bans. What are they going to do when they figure out that there need no longer be such a thing as a telecoms operator. We do most of the message packaging ourselves. It will be a bit difficult for any connectivity supplier to tell what's going out via one of our encrypted IP sessions. Question for Perry -- I'm assuming that it will soon be possible to originate encrypted TCP/IP sessions with a distant "process" somewhere. Do you see technical problems with a TCP/IP laundry being established "somewhere" that strips trace info from one of my processes and prevents back tracing beyond the mouth of this encrypted pipe? Also Perry, what did you think of the article "How Anarchy Works" in the latest Wired on the IETF? DCF