PGP's SMTP enforcer and ISPs

Recently, my ISP became the victim of spammers.  Their response, like many
other ISPs, is to block port 25 for all their dialup users.  This means
that all outgoing email must be routed through their mail server.

Now that PGP has an SMTP enforcers, and that others will eventually follow
with a S/MIME equivalent, we are literally an executive order away from an
effective (if not 100% complete) ban on "inappropriate" encryption on email
communications.

All it would take is a national emergency, like the next war against Saddam
Hussein, or a law that does not treat ISPs like common carriers and holds
them liable for what their users do.  

And the worst thing of all is that most people won't even notice it.  Hell,
I was the only person on my end to notice that my ISP had blocked port 25.

-- Phelix, "perfect paranoia is perfect awareness"

At 04:47 AM 11/06/1997 GMT, phelix@vallnet.com wrote:
>Now that PGP has an SMTP enforcers, and that others will eventually follow
>with a S/MIME equivalent, we are literally an executive order away from an
>effective (if not 100% complete) ban on "inappropriate" encryption on email
>communications.

Nah - private speech isn't something the President has authority over.
(I'm assuming you mean that kind of executive order, as opposed to
"the folks who run my ISP cut off port 25 by fiat and can cut off crypto
too".)
Besides, about all the PGP SMTP enforcer does is look for
	-----BEGIN PGP ENCRYPTED STUFF-----
or the equivalent binary formats, which is easy for anybody to write a
filter for,
but very tough to scale the average sendmail daemon to look for,
and it's easy enough to steganize your way around (Jon Callas recommends 
using -----BEGIN ZZZ ENCRYPTED STUFF----- to avoid the PGP SMTP filters :-)




				Thanks! 
					Bill
Bill Stewart, stewarts@ix.netcom.com
Regular Key PGP Fingerprint D454 E202 CBC8 40BF  3C85 B884 0ABE 4639