Subject: Re: Email Privacy eating software

From: "Steven M. Bellovin" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 18 Jul 2000 14:45:14 -0400

In message <[email-masked]>, Matt Holdrege wr
ites:
>At 11:50 AM 7/18/00 +0100, Jon Crowcroft wrote:
>>next summer's IETF meeting is tentatively scheduled for London, England
>>http://www.ietf.org/meetings/0mtg-sites.txt
>>
>>if you turn up at customs with a laptop, you may be asked to show any
>>and all files on it to the nice chaps there. if someone has sent you
>>crypted email (say using your public key) you may be obliged to
>>connect the lapto pto the public net and  access your other key to
>>decrypt the mail for the nice chaps in customs to priove that it is
>>not to do with pornography or terrorism - whereeve yo uare from, you
>>will have no recourse to say "no" or "this is commercial in
>>confidence" or "my company will fire me if i let this go to anyone or
>>send it over the net to decrypt at my home site etc etc"
>
>As one who travels to London quite often and has red hair and is of Irish 
>descent, this sounds a bit overmuch to me. I've never had anything other 
>than a kind welcome by British customs officials. There are loads of crazy 
>laws in the U.S. and other countries. We citizens are grateful that the 
>enforcement branch of the government chooses to ignore them unless provoked.
>
>
I'm not sure what "sounds a bit overmuch" to you.  Have a look at
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid%5F150000/150465.stm

		--Steve Bellovin

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From: Matt Holdrege <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 19 Jul 2000 01:16:18 -0700

>http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid%5F150000/150465.stm

How is this different than looking in your bags for porn magazines or 
videotapes? How is looking at your stored email different than looking at 
your paper correspondence?

As I stated in my previous post "unless provoked". Customs in many 
countries can be provoked to look at those things. What makes a computer 
special? Why single out the U.K. government when many others do essentially 
the same thing.

---

From: "Anthony Atkielski" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 19 Jul 2000 13:56:52 +0200

Matt Holdrege writes:

> How is this different than looking in your bags for
> porn magazines or videotapes?

It's not.  I take it that you don't mind having your bags searched?  How
about your wallet?  Where do you draw the line, or don't you draw one?

> How is looking at your stored email different
> than looking at your paper correspondence?

It's not--but nobody looks at your paper correspondence.  Through many
centuries of familiarity, it has come to be accepted that paper
correspondence is relatively private, even by those who fail to grasp the
equivalence of correspondence stored in computers.

> As I stated in my previous post "unless provoked".

As I implied in my previous post, selective enforcement is an open door to
erosion of critical freedoms.  "Provocation" should not be a factor in
enforcement.

> Customs in many countries can be provoked to look
> at those things.

If they can be provoked into looking at those things, then it stands to
reason that they can also be persuaded to ignore them.  Which technique do
you think the bad guys are more likely to use?

> What makes a computer special?

Nothing.  It's just like, say, the sum total of all the papers and personal
effects that you have in your home.  You don't mind if someone goes through
all of those, do you?  There _might_ be something illegal among them, after
all.

> Why single out the U.K. government when many others
> do essentially the same thing.

Multiple wrongs don't make a right.  And it sounds like the U.K. has gone
further than many other countries held to be at a similar level of
"civilization" (or "civilisation").

---

From: John Stracke <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 19 Jul 2000 10:16:23 -0400

> your paper correspondence?

Read it again--they were apparently going to use their program to view a known
porn site, not porn on his hard drive.

--
/==============================================================\
|John Stracke    | http://www.ecal.com |My opinions are my own.|
|Chief Scientist |=============================================|
|eCal Corp.      |You buttered your bread, now lie in it.      |
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