Subject: Re: PATRIOT/USA followup: ongoing House debate

From: "Steven M. Bellovin" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2001 16:24:33 -0400

In message <[email-masked]>, Valdis.Kletniek
[email-masked] writes:

>
>There was also the equating of "hacking" to "terrorism".  With the retroactive
>removal of a statute of limitations.  And provisions for "providing significan
>t
>aid" to terrorists.  This means that Steve Bellovin could (under the original
>proposals) end up in jail for life, because he wrote a paper on TCP sequence
>numbers, because Mitnick used a sequence number attack on somebody.

Nah -- that would be an ex post facto law, since it wasn't illegal to
publish that in 1989.

Of course, I may have to worry about my next paper...  And although ex
post facto laws are banned by the Constitution, there are (or at least
were) other provisions of dubious constitutionality in that bill.

Ah, well -- time to get ready for the traditional flood of "out of the
office" autoreplies...

		--Steve Bellovin, http://www.research.att.com/~smb
		Full text of "Firewalls" book now at http://www.wilyhacker.com

---

From: William Allen Simpson <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2001 20:56:03 -0400

> Nah -- that would be an ex post facto law, since it wasn't illegal to
Well, I would have thought that it wasn't illegal to publish the first 
internet-draft in '92 that lead to the nearly identical RFC-1334 "PPP 
Authentication Protocols" in '94.  (Read it and weep.)

But, as those of you who have been around here for a significant period of time already know, I spent the bulk of my life
savings fending off 
the FBI on a charge of _T_R_E_A_S_O_N_, and at least one university cut 
off my internet access just on the suspicion of the investigation.  

Are we all prepared to hazard that?

The new bill allows them to secretly monitor communications and business 
records, and seize all my computer equipment and bank accounts _during_ 
the investigation....  and reduces the burden of proof to "reasonable 
cause" and "reasonable necessity", instead of "probable cause".  

Are we *ALL* prepared to hazard that?

> were) other provisions of dubious constitutionality in that bill.
It's arguable that educating a foreign national on security issues has 
always been illegal.  However, the statute of limitations on that is 
merely increased to 8 years.  Increasing a statute of limitations time 
isn't considered an ex post facto law.

Unlimited is "the commission of such offense resulted in, or created a 
forseeable risk of, death or serious bodily injury to another person."

> Ah, well -- time to get ready for the traditional flood of "out of the
Amazingly enough, I haven't had any on my posts!
-- 
William Allen Simpson
    Key fingerprint =  17 40 5E 67 15 6F 31 26  DD 0D B9 9B 6A 15 2C 32

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2001 23:26:59 -0400

> Are we *ALL* prepared to hazard that?

prepared or not, do we have a choice?  our so-called public servants
are bigger threats to our liberty and security than any terrorist.

Keith