ietf
[Top] [All Lists]

Re: Email Privacy eating software

2000-07-18 11:10:03
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.



<Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread>