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Yes, indeed the PA law is for real!

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NODE 70fe4cfcYes, indeed the PA law is for real!
Well folks, you can go view the new PA law yourselves at URL
http://moose.erie.net/~italo/rssb655.html

PA Senate Bill 655 was signed into law on June 13, 1995, and it does 
appear to make non-logged anonymous remailers illegal.

-Thomas
NODE 71187999Re: Yes, indeed the PA law is for real!
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    Date: Fri, 13 Oct 1995 18:42:35 -0400 (EDT)
    From: Tom Edwards <tedwards@access.digex.net>

    Well folks, you can go view the new PA law yourselves at URL
    http://moose.erie.net/~italo/rssb655.html

    PA Senate Bill 655 was signed into law on June 13, 1995, and it does
    appear to make non-logged anonymous remailers illegal.

I'm guessing that you're referring to this part of the law:

  (1) [makes or possesses any instrument, apparatus, equipment or]
  makes, distributes, possesses, uses or assembles an unlawful
  telecommunication device or modifies, alters, programs or reprograms
  a telecommunication device designed, adapted or which can be used:

  . . .

  (ii) to conceal or to assist another to conceal from any [supplier
  of telecommunications] telecommunicationservice provider or from any
  lawful authority the existence or place of origin or of destination
  of any telecommunication; or

IANAL, but this sure sounds like one could make the case that an ISP
that allowed users to send mail to arbitrary addresses,
e. g. xxx@anon.penet.fi, would be `guilty' of assisting another to
conceal the place of origin and/or destination of a telecommunication.
I'd imagine that the authorities would be a bit more likely to go
after anonymous-remailer@xxx.net however.

In fact, I wonder if the fact that mail to rfb@cmu.edu is forwarded to
rfb@lehman.com couldn't be construed as `assistance' if I happened to
receive mail at that address through penet.  Sigh . . . .

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--
Rick Busdiecker                        Please do not send electronic junk mail!
 net: rfb@lehman.com or rfb@cmu.edu    PGP Public Key: 0xDBD9994D
 www: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs.cmu.edu/user/rfb/http/home.html
 send mail, subject "send index" for mailbot info, "send pgp key" gets my key
A `hacker' is one who writes code.  Breaking into systems is `cracking'.
NODE 8ee670fcRe: Yes, indeed the PA law is for real!
Rick Busdiecker (rfb@lehman.com) wrote:
> I'm guessing that you're referring to this part of the law:

>   (1) [makes or possesses any instrument, apparatus, equipment or]
>   makes, distributes, possesses, uses or assembles an unlawful
>   telecommunication device or modifies, alters, programs or reprograms
>   a telecommunication device designed, adapted or which can be used:
    . . .
>   (ii) to conceal or to assist another to conceal from any [supplier
>   of telecommunications] telecommunicationservice provider or from any
>   lawful authority the existence or place of origin or of destination
>   of any telecommunication; or

Well, given that I haven't seen any Bell employees rushing to tear out
payphones, I suspect that if it ever went to court, they'd have to show
intent to commit or assist fraud.  Since anonymous remailers (and
payphones, prepaid calling cards, etc) have legitimate uses, they can't
prove you were intending to assist crime by providing those services.
There's also the ECPA protections...