Moral Crypto

[Declan McCullagh]

On Sun, Sep 02, 2001 at 12:34:31PM -0700, Tim May wrote:
> The other remailers can theoretically band together as some kind of 
> guild and reject packets from "rogue" remailers, but there are numerous 
> practical problems. Identifying a "rogue" remailer which "allows" 
> packets from "baddies" (e.g, from Mormons, or free speech advocates) 

In the next five years or so, I would not be suprised to see a call
for federal licensing of remailers. Some of the more mainstream
remailer operators might even go along with it, eventually, calling
for a "voluntary-mandatory" code of conduct and industry self-
regulation. This code of conduct might mean refusing packets from some
countries, keeping logs for a certain amount of time, etc. (Identity
escrow, ala key escrow. Key escrow died because of business
pressure. No similar pressure exists against identity escrow.)

In practice, it will naturally have limited effect, since it's easy
enough to send mail to an offshore remailer, and any U.S. law will
spur development and deployment of non-U.S. services. And bin Ladin
can probably figure out how to get an AOL account. Then again, other
countries, at least the larger OECD ones, may follow suit.

Probably in those other nations, there will be few if any
constitutional safeguards prohibiting legislatures from enacting such
laws. Even in the U.S., I'm not sure why it would be immediately
obvious that such a law would be found to be unconstitutional. The
usual cites, such as McIntyre, deal with the most protected form of
anonymous communication, political speech about elected officials, not
the multiple horsemen who can be relied on to trot about during debates.

I can envision a legal situation that is close to the Napster-Gnutella
controversy, where the entry points to the network are targets for the
RIAA/MPAA lawyers. Similarly, the entry points to the remailer network
may be targets under such a legal structure. Underground remailers
will always exist, and will be used for high-value transactions (let's
hope enough remailers would exist to provide enough security), but a
robust system that's also mainstream may not.

I'm not saying this is especially likely, but it is a scenario that's
worth contemplating as a long-term possibility.

-Declan