From: "James A. Donald" <jamesd@echeque.com>
Date: Thu, 5 Sep 1996 03:29:56 +0800
To: Jon Lebkowsky <cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: What is the EFF doing exactly?
Message-ID: <199609041557.IAA00984@dns1.noc.best.net>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


At 10:33 PM 9/3/96 -0800, jim bell wrote:
>>The Leahy crypto bill introduced early this year made (paraphrasing) "the 
>>use of encryption to thwart a law-enforcement investigation illegal."  I 
>>immediately pointed out that while this wouldn't make _encrypted_ remailers 
>>illegal, per se,  effectively it would because the moment an investigation 
>>(even a phony or trumped-up one) is started and is "thwarted" by the 
>>encryption used, the remailer operator became guilty of a crime.  

At 07:10 AM 9/4/96 -0500, Jon Lebkowsky wrote:
> Is that true? Or is it that the individual user would be guilty of a crime?

Since the individual user would already be guilty of a crime, if he is 
using the remailer to conceal his crimes, the paragraph in question would
be fairly useless and irrelevant unless it had the meaning that Jim Bell
attributes to it.

I believe that judges have a policy of interpreting deliberately 
ambiguous statutes in whatever way makes the most sense.  The only 
sensible interpretation of Leahy's bill is that it criminalizes 
strong remailers, that it is intended to punish ANYONE, not just 
the criminals themselves, who obstructs investigations.

 ---------------------------------------------------------------------
              				|  
We have the right to defend ourselves	|   http://www.jim.com/jamesd/
and our property, because of the kind	|  
of animals that we are. True law	|   James A. Donald
derives from this right, not from the	|  
arbitrary power of the state.		|   jamesd@echeque.com