From: jim bell <jimbell@pacifier.com>
Date: Wed, 22 May 1996 07:17:42 +0800
To: Hal <cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: An alternative to remailer shutdowns
Message-ID: <199605211741.KAA02765@mail.pacifier.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


At 03:02 PM 5/20/96 -0700, Hal wrote:

>I was contacted by the FBI on Friday due to some threatening mail which
>was apparently sent through my remailer.  According to 18 USC 875(c),
>"Whoever transmits in interstate commerce any communication containing
>any threat to kidnap any person or any threat to injure the person of
>another, shall be fined not more than $1,000 or imprisoned not more
>than five years, or both."  I may not be able to continue operating
>either of my remailers (alumni.caltech.edu and shell.portal.com) for
>much longer due to this kind of abuse.

You may recall that when the Leahy encryption bill was proposed, and many 
people around here were fawning all over it, I raised the issue that it 
would allow the govt to harrass and prosecutor encrypted remailer operators 
since their use of encryption allows investigations to be thwarted.  What 
you've just seen, while not directly involving encryption, is the analogous 
version of such harassment with simple remailers.

If there is any need for laws or regulations here, it is one to explicitly 
exempt remailers from responsibility for email they forward, or decrypt and 
then forward.  (It isn't clear, for example, why a remailer is any more 
responsible for the contents of a message than any other point on the 
Internet chain.)

Obligatory AP reference:

If AP was up and functioning, there wouldn't be a government to fund an FBI 
to pay agents to come and harass you for forwarding a message that they've 
probably misinterpreted anyway.

Jim Bell
jimbell@pacifier.com