Re: PING packets illegal?

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Some entity that called itself "Mark M." appears to have said:

> On Tue, 13 Feb 1996 anonymous-remailer@shell.portal.com [me] wrote:
 
>> that ...... but if those ping packets contained little pieces of something
>> like PGP ...... would the host being pinged be breaking the law? Would

> Exporting encryption to the U.S. from another country is not illegal, only
> exporting from the U.S. is.  The method of transmissioni is irrelevant.  It
> does not matter if TCP packets or ICMP-ping packets are used to transmit the 
> data. 

That wasn't my point. I was talking about the host being pinged. Would 
that host be breaking ITAR regulations by sending those evil 
PGP-containing packets *back* to the foreign host?

> the destination are violating the law.  Since it is impossible to monitor the
> contents of every packet being transmitted over a network, I seriously doubt
> that any intermediate host would be considered to be in violation of ITAR.

Impossible, maybe. But that doesn't mean it can't be illegal. Take the 
CDA, for example. Fuck. Oops, Exon will be displeased. Am I going to be 
taken to jail? Most likely not. Was it illegal? Technically, yes.

Thanks,

Michael Ellis
<mellis@alpha.c2.org>

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> >> that ...... but if those ping packets contained little pieces of something
> >> like PGP ...... would the host being pinged be breaking the law? Would
> 
[zap!]
> 
> > the destination are violating the law.  Since it is impossible to monitor the
> > contents of every packet being transmitted over a network, I seriously doubt
> > that any intermediate host would be considered to be in violation of ITAR.

On an ecouraging note, I recall a Packet Radio case where someone posted 
what amounted to an advertisement for a 1-900 service.  Commercial 
advertisements being prohibited on all Ham Radio, the FCC moved to 
censure ALL of the dozen-or-so packet stations which had automatically 
forwarded the offending message.

Great alarm was raised in the packet community, and I believe it was the 
ARRL which enlightened the FCC that enforcement in such a manner would 
destroy packet radio by requiring each message to be manually inspected 
prior to retransmission - an obvious impracticality.  (Even though the 
letter of the law may have permitted such a strict enforcement by the FCC.)

In the end, only the ORIGINATOR of the message was "punished."

-Doug