Privacy of Internet poses legal puzzle

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- Each time a revolutionary new technology has arrived, the governments of the day have been leery of its capacity for mischief and criminality. Centuries ago, there were calls for giving the authorities the power of prior restraint lest the printing press become an instrument of sedition and slander. Later, there were qualms about selling automobiles to the public because crooks could use them to escape the police.

As the designated representative of this rich and checkered tradition, Philip Reitinger, a prosecutor for the Justice Department, knew he faced a tough crowd here. He was speaking last Wednesday at a conference to mark the 35th anniversary of the founding of the Laboratory for Computer Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a gathering of technology's true believers.

Reitinger, square-jawed and pin-striped, opened with a bit of dry humor, laced with sarcasm. "It may come as a shock to many of you, but people commit crimes on the Internet," he said. So began a spirited discussion and debate on a seemingly narrow subject, "Should the Laboratory for Computer Science Anonymous Remailer Be Shut Down?" But it was a discussion that focused on some of the broadest social and legal issues involving the Internet: identity, privacy, anonymity and free speech. Reitinger's opposite number on the panel was Nadine Strossen, a professor at the New York Law School and president of the American Civil Liberties Union. They were joined by Frans Kaashoek, an associate professor at MIT, who has been in charge of the anonymous remailer since it began operating in 1996. An anonymous remailer, a type of data-network relay, is essentially a technological buffer. It can be used to mask the origin of a piece of e-mail or the computer from which a person is browsing the World Wide Web. It does this by stripping off the identifying information on an e-mail, for example, and substituting an anonymous code number or term. Sophisticated remailers, like the one at MIT, also route messages through many different relay computers around the world, leaving no record of the path an anonymous message traveled after leaving the remailer. There are about 40 anonymous remail services worldwide. They are used by, among others, dissidents and human rights representatives living in nations with repressive governments, whistle-blowers inside companies or government agencies, minority groups fearing discrimination and people wishing to avoid the bulk e-mail advertising pitches that marketers increasingly send over the Net. But anonymous remail services, federal prosecutors say, are also used by child pornographers, extortionists, software pirates and drug dealers. Though not illegal, remailers are often viewed with suspicion by law enforcement agencies. "Anonymity has a down side to it," Reitinger said. "It's hard to put a pseudonym in jail."

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