From: George A. Gleason <gg@well.sf.ca.us>
Date: Fri, 26 Feb 93 04:02:15 PST
To: gnu@toad.com
Subject: Re: more ideas on anonymity
Message-ID: <199302261159.AA19219@well.sf.ca.us>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



John, I missed where I might have been advocating censorship... maybe it's
so late at night that my logic filter is getting fuzzy...  Of course one
can't see the content of an encrypted anonymised message, but the case I'm
concerned with here is where someone receives an encrypted threat message or
some such, and wants it traced.  In that case there ought to be some means.
I'm speaking from recent experience, having received what the Berkeley PD
considered a credible death threat on my answering machine last week...

Okay, maybe your point hinges on the "advocating violent acts" item.  Well
this is a pretty tight issue: hard to differentiate between someone
advocating insurrection, advocating race war, and advocating going out in
your own neighborhood and killing (whoever).  Either way it is advocacy of
violence against someone.  And I honestly don't have a simple answer to that
one.  The main point I was trying to go for is pretty unambiguous, that
direct threats of violent actions are much more significant than for
instance advocacy of committing some victimless crime or another... but
that's a dull-obvious one compared to the advocating violence item.  

Somehow I believe we're going to need to consider the threats & violence
questions sooner or later, if for no other reason than to have some
solutions at hand when it happens and people start clamoring for
restrictions on public access to crypto and anonymity.  (jeez my writing is
a mess at this hour!)

-gg