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From: gnu@hoptoad.UUCP
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Re: Privacy and Email - The Law Takes Notice
Message-ID: <2217@hoptoad.uucp>
Date: Fri, 29-May-87 06:23:05 EDT
Article-I.D.: hoptoad.2217
Posted: Fri May 29 06:23:05 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 30-May-87 10:27:26 EDT
References: <1189@epimass.EPI.COM> <106@asi.UUCP>
Organization: Nebula Consultants in San Francisco
Lines: 34

In article <106@asi.UUCP>, metro@asi.UUCP (Metro T. Sauper) writes:
> I would think there must be a  distinction made between MCI's or Compuserve's
> email service and our local UNIX inter-office mail system.

The law is deliberately unclear on this point.  The people who wrote it were
actually interested in making it illegal to listen to cellular telephones,
and to make it easier for the government to get wiretaps.  The rest
of the bill was just riders and random ideas thrown together.  Since
nobody has been charged with any crimes under this bill, no court has
decided what it covers and what it doesn't.  In other words, it is a
badly drafted law and we have no idea if it covers us or not.

I am not a lawyer either.  I did discover a few things while the bill was
still before the Congress:

1.  You can send a 20-word telegram to every member of Congress, and the
President, for something like $75.  I did.

2.  They don't care whether you do or not.  Only one recipient actually
knew the current status of the bill.  Another 5 sent me letters
thanking me for expressing my opinion and telling me the bill was
sitting in a House subcommittee (it was before the full Senate at the
time).  Another 5 had sent me letters thanking me in generic terms and
not even mentioning the bill.  The rest ignored me.  They had no idea
that when they attached the bill to the omnibus drug bill as a rider,
and passed it, that they were making wiretapping by administrative fiat
legal, and calling the legal status of the Usenet into question.  And
they didn't care, either.

I guess our Congressmen are way too busy passing new laws to ever read them...
-- 
Copyright 1987 John Gilmore; you may redistribute only if your recipients may.
(This is an effort to bend Stargate to work with Usenet, not against it.)
{sun,ptsfa,lll-crg,ihnp4,ucbvax}!hoptoad!gnu	       gnu@ingres.berkeley.edu