From: danisch@ira.uka.de (Hadmut Danisch)
Date: Mon, 17 Jul 95 09:07:25 PDT
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: Anti-Electronic Racketeering Act of 1995
Message-ID: <9507171606.AA10619@elysion.iaks.ira.uka.de>
MIME-Version: 1.0
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I am not familiar with american laws and have two questions:

1. If the bill becomes law, how can someone who violates it be
punished? 


2. Does someone who publishes software which encodes or encrypts 
(ASCII is a code, isn't it?) have to prove that he has provided the
universal decoder to the state or does the state have to prove that he
didn't do? 

In the former case, does he get any receipt from the department of
justice and what does the receipt say (1.3MByte of software
received...)?

In the latter case, how do they want to prove he didn't? If he gave
just a big 

  for(i=0;;i++) try_key(i);

how do they want to prove this doesn't work? There is a certain
problem in theory. I don't know the english name, but in german it is
called the 'halt problem'. It is not a simple task to prove that a
certain turing machine program doesn't stop or doesn't find a solution of a
given problem. How do they want to prove that the program provided to
the department of justice doesn't find the key just within the next 10
seconds?

Hadmut