What NAI is telling people

[Declan McCullagh]

Of course there is no law or regulation that prohibits individuals
from accepting encrypted email from the blacklist countries (or
an ISP from forwarding it).

Though perhaps government pressure or simple misunderstanding can 
explain the situation you encountered. I'd be interested in any
verifiable info on this.

-Declan


On Mon, Jul 16, 2001 at 02:29:16PM -0700, codehead at ix.netcom.com wrote:
> I just got off the phone with one of the customer service people at 
> NAI, who informed me that "Encrypted e-mails from certain countries 
> aren't accepted in the US" and that accepting encrypted email from 
> one of the "black list" (i.e., North Korea, Libya, Iran, Iraq, China, 
> etc.) is illegal under US law.
> 
> When queried about the issue of *accepting* encrypted e-mail from a 
> "black-list" country, the customer rep stated that this is what he 
> was told by higher-ups in the company.
> 
> Never mind the issue of web-based email, mail originating from the 
> dot-com, dot-edu, dot-net or dot-org TLDs, spoofed headers or open 
> relays.  It was impossible to resist quoting Tim May on the 
> transparency of national borders, and to point out that so far, 
> anyway, there was no ubiquitous filter at the borders.  The rep 
> backpedaled and stated that "some" ISPs, specifically AOL, were 
> choosing not to accept such email.
> 
> Anyone have any idea if any ISPs are refusing to accept encrypted 
> email from "black-listed" countries?
> 
> Or is this just a matter of NAI cluelessness?