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From: kevin@harvard.ARPA (Kevin Crowston)
Newsgroups: net.crypt
Subject: Re: encrypted mail
Message-ID: <150@harvard.ARPA>
Date: Thu, 30-May-85 10:29:02 EDT
Article-I.D.: harvard.150
Posted: Thu May 30 10:29:02 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 1-Jun-85 11:12:40 EDT
References: <4173@allegra.UUCP> <672@vortex.UUCP>
Reply-To: kevin@harvard.UUCP (Kevin Crowston)
Organization: Aiken Computation Laboratory, Harvard
Lines: 17

It seems to me that encrypted mail shouldn't be much of a legal issue.
First of all, it's hard to accuse someone of knowingly transmitting
something that he can't actually read (although they might still be
accused of acting in a reckless fashion, I suppose).  Secondly, if the
traffic ever became an issue, encrypted messages could simply be
screened out, that is, if you need to write a filter to avoid passing
someone's copyrighted column, (which sounds like a difficult problem
anyway, but assuming you did it) you simply make the worst case
assumption about encrypted traffic and dump it.

I admit that I don't really know the legal issues involved here; now
that I'm thinking about it, I think I'll go ask a lawyer.

-- 

Kevin Crowston				UUCP: {seismo,ut-sally}!harvard!kevin
MIT Sloan School of Management		ARPA: kevin@harvard.ARPA