IN A move likely to horrify civil liberties advocates, an American
cryptographer is proposing that future computers should be fitted with
electronic “licence plates”. He says this would help to combat the growth in
cybercrime, track down virus writers, and block unwanted e-mails.
Tom Cusick, a cryptographer at the State University of New York in Buffalo,
believes that the anonymity and untraceability of computer communications is one
of the main hurdles in tackling computer crime. He suggests that every outgoing
message from a computer should be tagged with a unique electronic code that
would allow it to be tracked to…
