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Making Encryption A Special Circumstance
heby writes "According to an article at SecurityFocus, the U.S. Justice Department is apparently planning to criminalize encryption when used during the commission of a felony under federal law. If you think you have nothing to worry about, think again. Have you ever filed too many tax deductions? If you use e-file via a web page using SSL for filing your taxes, under this proposal this becomes an additional five-year felony."
Another fine example of the proliferation of pointless laws. If something is a crime, why is it any more damaging to use cryptography in the process? If I rob a bank, I am not doing extra extra harm to the bank or the public if I use encryption to plan the robbery. There is no moral, financial or environmental harm done by using encryption - it is te actual crime which does this damage. There are already laws against and punishments set out for the crime Why stop with encryption? Why not make it a crime to use a telephone, letter, car, mobile phone etc to commit a crime?
The thing to keep in mind is the same thing all judges, lawyers, and politicians have ignored for the past three decades (much to this nation's detriment, IMO). "The enumeration in the constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others, retained by the people." (That's the Ninth Amendment.)
IOW, "No, the constitution doesn't directly mention things like privacy, encryption, etc. and no, it doesn't matter because we didn't have to list everything we can do." I wish more folks got this...
JMR
Speaking ONLY for Jim Ray (all others are usually disgusted with my views!)
Try e-gold - (contact me). I'm NOT e-
If you discuss the crime before hand you have commit the extra crime of conspiracy.
The government has been pushing through all these laws to strip us of our rights under the guise of "national security."
You must be a criminal if you don't like having your phone tapped, being stripped search when entering buildings, having the police pull you over and search your car. What do you have to hide?
Fight Spammers!
Another fine example of the proliferation of pointless laws. If something is a crime, why is it any more damaging to use cryptography in the process?
In most jurisdictions, the penalty for armed robbery [as opposed to plain-old, garden variety, everyday un-armed robbery] is substantially more severe if that arm is a gun [as opposed to, say, a knife, even though a knife is every bit as lethal as a gun].
Encryption as a felony won't be much of a sentencing tool for violent terrorists [they'll receive the death penalty], but it will be enormously useful against their pseudo-civilian supporters and fund-raisers [Google on CAIR terrorist University of Idaho or CAIR terrorist University of South Florida].
This sort of thing has a very old history in statutory law. For instance, in my state, we have nineteenth century laws that forbid a person to wear a mask in public [the nineteenth century equivalent of encrypted communications]. Why? Because during Reconstruction, we had a little problem with this terrorist outfit called the Ku Klux Klan that was running around lynching people under the cover of darkness and the cloak of sheets.
And what, in recent legislative history, warrants that assumption? Seems to me that common sense has long gone out the window.
For that matter if you get them but don't use them before they expire are they still income?
That poster in the current poll is right about the IRS, some vampires do keep their victims alive so that they can feed from them again and again.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.