FC: More on Bob Goodlatte, spam, and censorhappy legislators

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

[Steve is a former computer scientist at the NRL. At the end of this post 
is another computer program that Goodlatte's bill would render illegal. Do 
these congresscritters -- or, really, their staff -- ever think these 
things through? How about reading up on the concept of a government with 
limited powers? The only law we need from these folks is one requiring all 
of them to take a remedial course on the First Amendment... --Declan]

*********

Date: Sat, 24 Mar 2001 20:04:26 -0500
From: "Steven J. Greenwald" <sjg6 () gate net>
To: declan () well com
Subject: Re: FC: Rep. Bob Goodlatte wants to make this email message illegal

Declan McCullagh wrote:
>
> http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,42599,00.html
>
>    Use a Spam, Go to Prison
>    by Declan McCullagh (declan () wired com)
>    2:00 a.m. Mar. 24, 2001 PST

Declan,

I'm right in the middle of teaching a graduate course in cryptography,
and this is a topic I am currently teaching. Not spamming, but the
hiding of source and routing information. This is done for privacy
reasons, mainly to prevent such things as traffic analysis, and to stop
eavesdroppers from suddenly noticing that you are communicating with
particular people. In fact, the Naval Research Laboratory in DC has done
research on this, and invented and implemented a system that hides the
routing information of packet (it's called "Onion Routing;"
http://www.onion-router.net/).

This stupid anti-spam measure, if passed, will be just another way that
our personal privacy is eroded.


--Steve Greenwald

*********

From: Tim May <tcmay () got net>
Subject:  Rep. Bob Goodlatte wants to make this email   message illegal
To: cypherpunks () lne com
Date: Sat, 24 Mar 2001 11:15:27 -0800

At 12:54 PM -0500 3/24/01, Declan McCullagh wrote:
>----- Forwarded message from Declan McCullagh <declan () well com> -----
>
>http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,42599,00.html
>
>    Use a Spam, Go to Prison
>    by Declan McCullagh (declan () wired com)
>    2:00 a.m. Mar. 24, 2001 PST

....

>
>
>    Goodlatte's Anti-Spamming Act of 2001 allows the Secret Service to
>    police software that "is designed or produced primarily for the
>    purpose of concealing the source or routing information of bulk
>    unsolicited electronic mail messages."


Some nice implications for remailers, eh?

Lawyers may argue what "designed or produced primarily" means, and
may argue that remailers have non-spam uses, and they may even cite
numbers of political messages vs. numbers of commercial and spam
messages, but this will be an expensive battle which most remailer
operators in the U.S. will not choose to fight. Also, some Reichstag
Fire provocateurs may start using remailers to spam with just as they
have, in all likelihood, been doing with their "How to Make Bombz"
and "Lolitas Being Snuffed" messages.

Ah, at least Canada is a place where there are no such laws, so ZKS is safe....

Whoops, scratch that last point.

>
>    A second section of his anti-spam measure says it's illegal to
>    distribute software that "has only limited commercially significant
>    purpose or use other than to conceal such source or routing
>    information."
>
>    That could cover utilities like the Perl script below.


And this clause even more attacks the remailers and their authors.

As we have been saying for many years: commercial speech _is_ just
speech. America went down the wrong fork in the road when it decided
that some types of speech, like promoting the smoking of a brand of
cigarettes, was not as protected as other types of speech.

(Lest anyone think the restrictions apply only to FCC-regulated
things like television and radio, billboards and magazine ads are
affected as well. Even if not banned outright, advertisers are forced
to provide warnings, precisely analogous to the recent proposals that
certain Web pages would have to contain links to "opposing points of
view" or even to some "public.net" place where politically correct
truth would be maintained at public expense.)

More than just "commercial speech _is_ just speech," so is the
spending of money. The phrase "to utter a check" is one such pithy
expression of this (possibly coined by Eric Hughes, possibly in usage
before his usage). This point is most directly relevant to
Cypherpunks in the context of attempts to ban untraceable spending,
but is also of direct relevance in the current "campaign financing"
yipyap. Whom I spend my money on is my political speech.

A remailer is just another speaker. (And lest anyone doubt this,
recall my semi-serious point that remailers call themselves
"re-commenters" and include a line like "Does anyone have any
comments on what this article included below is talking about?" Any
attempt to ban speech not traceable to a person must deal with the
issue of how it then bans speech which includes such speech. A
quibble, but such is the way censorship spreads.)

--Tim May
--
Timothy C. May         tcmay () got net        Corralitos, California
Political: Co-founder Cypherpunks/crypto anarchy/Cyphernomicon
Technical: physics/soft errors/Smalltalk/Squeak/agents/games/Go
Personal: b.1951/UCSB/Intel '74-'86/retired/investor/motorcycles/guns

*********

[A reader contributes the below. Note the intent requirement that is absent 
from the Goodlatte legislation. --Declan]

http://www.spamlaws.com/state/va.html

§ 18.2-152.4.   Computer trespass; penalty.

    B. It shall be unlawful for any person knowingly to sell, give or
otherwise distribute or possess with the intent to sell, give or
distribute software which (i) is primarily designed or produced for the
purpose of facilitating or enabling the falsification of electronic mail
transmission information or other routing information; (ii) has only
limited commercially significant purpose or use other than to facilitate
or enable the falsification of electronic mail transmission information
or other routing information; or (iii) is marketed by that person or
another acting in concert with that person with that person's knowledge
for use in facilitating or enabling the falsification of electronic mail
transmission information or other routing information.

*********

[David E. Smith" <dave () technopagan org> contributes the following. --DBM]

LOGFILE=/home/spam/proclog

:0 HB
*
{
:0 fhw
| formail \
        -I "Message-ID:" \
        -I "Received:" \
        -I "From: spammer () spammer com" \
        -I "References:" \
        -I "Return-Path:" \
        -I "Sender:" \
        -I "X-Mailer: procspam" \
        -I "Content-type:" \
        -I "Lines:" \
        -I "MIME-Version:" \
        -I "In-Reply-To:" \
        -I "Delivered-To:" \
        -i "To:"
:0 fhw
| formail -R "X-To:" "To:"
:0 fhw
| formail -I "Old-To:" -a "Message-ID:"
:0 hb
| $SENDMAIL -t
DELIVERED=yes
}

********* 




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