[92850] in Cypherpunks
Re: Question on U.S. Postal Service and crypto
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Robert A. Costner)
Thu Jan 8 20:16:51 1998
Date: Thu, 08 Jan 1998 15:26:54 -0500
To: David Miller <dm0@avana.net>
From: "Robert A. Costner" <pooh@efga.org>
Cc: cypherpunks@algebra.com
In-Reply-To: <34B51EC8.2489@avana.net>
Reply-To: "Robert A. Costner" <pooh@efga.org>
At 10:45 AM 1/8/98 -0800, David Miller wrote:
>> An interesting feature of the digital postmark is that the USPS was making
>> the claim that if you receive an email that the USPS send to you that was
>> not meant for you, then you have committed a federal crime when you read
it.
>
>I'm not so sure about this, Robert. I've heard the rumor that it is a crime,
>but I have also heard that if something is delivered to your box, it is yours
>and you are not required to send it back unopened if it is not addressed to
>you. I tend to believe the latter, as it is the side of the story shared by
>USPS employees.
I wasn't commenting on the legality, but on the fact that the USPS web page
was making the claim that it was a crime. Apparently whoever wrote the
legal disclaimer felt that email could be misdelivered in the same fashion
in which postal mail could be misdelivered and was making this claim. I
found the claim to be nutty and made me think they didn't know what they
were doing.
-- Robert Costner Phone: (770) 512-8746
Electronic Frontiers Georgia mailto:pooh@efga.org
http://www.efga.org/ run PGP 5.0 for my public key
