Re: future existence of free remailers?

At  5:59 PM 8/10/94 -0700, Timothy C. May wrote:
>Joichi-san writes:
>
>> Please excuse me if this has already been discussed... but... What about
>> the trend of busting the sysops of bbs'? The recent Fidonet bust in Italy
>> seems to support this trend. It sounds to me like any remailers remailing
>> illegal stuff may get caught in the dragnet.
>>
>> No?
>
>With nested encryption through the Labyrinth (first the Net, then the
>Web, now the Labyrinth?), only the last remailer who remails to a site
>that is under observation or is a sting site (common in Memphis) is
>vulnerable.
>
>And even that last remailer may be able to claim ignorance (and win in
>court) if he can show that what he mailed was unreadable to him, i.e.,
>encrypted to the recipient. (This is another reason I favor a goal of
>"everyone a remailer.")
>
>With canonical remailers, and no logging, earlier remailers should be
>safe.

Interesting. So if the carrier is ignorant, they're off the hook?

>By the way, welcome Joichi (your first post to the list, that I can
>recall).

Thanks for the welcome. I've been lurking, but hadn't had the opportunity
to make any comments before, and it looks like this point wasn't much of a
point anyway. :-)

back to lurk mode.

 - Joi


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Joichi Ito writes:

(quoting my post)

> >And even that last remailer may be able to claim ignorance (and win in
                               ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> >court) if he can show that what he mailed was unreadable to him, i.e.,
> >encrypted to the recipient. (This is another reason I favor a goal of
> >"everyone a remailer.")
> >
> >With canonical remailers, and no logging, earlier remailers should be
> >safe.
> 
> Interesting. So if the carrier is ignorant, they're off the hook?

Note my "may" above...none of this stuff has been tested in court.
(Not even digital signatures have yet been tested.) Common carrier
status--such as Federal Express has--has certainly not been granted to
remailers. 

It seems plausible to me that most jurors would be sympathetic to a
claim that a remailer was ignorant of what was being remailed. A bunch
of bits is a bunch of bits.

However, the actual crime may be the act of remailing itself. Not now,
but maybe someday. (Speculation: Legislation will be passed that bans
phone and packet remailers as being in contravention of the Digital
Telephony Act. A "know your customers" clause may require ID for each
packet. Lots of scenarios to consider.)

--Tim May


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tcmay@netcom.com (Timothy C. May) writes:

>(Not even digital signatures have yet been tested.) Common carrier
>status--such as Federal Express has--has certainly not been granted to
>remailers. 

This is one of the things that worries me about the Digital Telephony bill.
In the various apologias and explanations from EFF, CyberWire Dispatch, etc.
about why EFF helped with this bill, it was mentioned that online service
providers have been removed from its coverage because they are not "common
carriers".  It only applies, they say, to common carriers like phone companies.

Obviously I haven't read the text of the bill (probably no one has ;-) but
this certainly raises the question of whether pursuing common carrier status
would cause electronic service providers to fall under the wiretap require-
ments of the bill.

Maybe I'll ask on usenet.

Hal

Hal says:
> This is one of the things that worries me about the Digital
> Telephony bill.  In the various apologias and explanations from EFF,
> CyberWire Dispatch, etc.  about why EFF helped with this bill, it
> was mentioned that online service providers have been removed from
> its coverage because they are not "common carriers".  It only
> applies, they say, to common carriers like phone companies.

UUNET, among others, considers itself to be a common carrier.

Perry