Four articles are excerpted below: Wired News on government's motion to seal public court records Sierra Times: "IRS Prosecutes Outspoken Dissident" About.com: "Jim Bell's show trial" Cluebot.com on how government surveillance killed the cypherpunks list -Declan *********** http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,43064,00.html The U.S. government wants to seal public court records in a trial of an Internet essayist for privacy reasons. Assistant U.S. Attorney Robb London this week asked a federal judge to seal all documents -- including exhibits and transcripts -- that might include personal information and home addresses about people who testified in the trial of Jim Bell. A jury found Bell guilty of two counts of interstate stalking. London said: "We are concerned that information in these exhibits not be published... (We) don't need to have that information posted on the Internet." While the charges are crucial to understanding the case against Bell, the government feels uneasy about the home addresses of federal agents being easily accessible to the public. London cited the addresses of agents dozens of times in open court, and displayed digital photographs of the homes Bell visited. U.S. District Judge Jack Tanner thought about London's request for a moment, then denied it. "I don't think I have the authority to do that," Tanner said. [The meaning was changed slightly in editing. The fourth paragraph should be "addresses of people Bell *believed* to be federal agents but were not. One was, for instance, a real estate agent. --DBM] *********** http://www.sierratimes.com/archive/files/apr/13/arst041301.htm IRS Prosecutes Outspoken Dissident SierraTimes 04.13.00 James Dalton Bell may remind you of somebody you know. He's very bright, dresses and looks like a nerd and, most importantly, he dislikes the IRS. In that last respect, he is not in a minority. Where Jim Bell does fall into a minority is that instead of merely grumbling quietly, he decided to do something about it. And that's why he was just convicted in the Washington Federal District Court in Tacoma on Tuesday [4/10/2001]. Jim Bell has been a lifelong libertarian, ever since he was a teenager. Bell's view of government was that it was unnecessary. Is he an anarchist? Only, as he puts it, in the sense of "I believe in order; I do not believe in orders." He disparaged the huge hierarchies that have evolved in current bureaucracies, and believed that such hierarchies were unresponsive and dehumanizing. And, as Bell would personally learn, such a hierarchy creates two classes as outlined in George Orwell's Animal Farm: those who are part of the government hierarchy, and those who are not. [...] Bell, in his defense, stated that he had signed the LP oath that he would not initiate violence. And there was absolutely no direct evidence that he had ever initiated violence against anyone. People that he had come in contact with in his 2000 investigation characterized him as polite, and did not see him as threat. And Bell had obviously taken no discernible steps that would equip him to initiate violence. So what the government was left with was prosecuting a thought crime: intent. Because Bell had used his freedom of political speech to write such items as "Assassination Politics" and disclose IRS agents' home addresses, he obviously had to have the intent to harass federal agents. And the harassment was loosely construed. Any attempt to find or disclose any personal information about an agent can be made to fit federal law against "intention to harass or injure" an agent. Several times during the trial, the prosecutor made it clear that such an investigation was inappropriate and illegal merely on the basis that the subjects of such investigation were federal agents. Numerous times he cited the special privilege that agents hold that ordinary citizens don't possess. Federal agents are, indeed, a breed apart and must be specially protected, he insisted. While they could surveil and investigate ordinary citizens, it was illegal for ordinary citizens to do the same to them. [...] *********** http://civilliberty.about.com/newsissues/civilliberty/library/weekly/aa04110... Jim Bell's show trial Cypherpunk Jim Bell was found guilty of making the feds nervous Dateline: 4/11/01 Jim Bell has been probed, raided and arrested. He spent time in prison for "obstructing" Internal Revenue Service agents and using a false Social Security number. Now Bell has been convicted for get this stalking government arm-twisters. Stalking? Well ... that's what they call it. Bell gathered the sort of information on them that they compiled on him and many, many other people for years. For that offense, the feds decided to send Bell away again, and they did everything in their power to fix the trial. A cypherpunk and libertarian, Bell originally got official skirts in a bind when he penned Assassination Politics, a provocative think piece that postulated an Internet-based system for anonymously rewarding people who knock off abusive government officials. All hot and bothered by the article, the feds made Bell a target of an intense investigation. Soon, he was an unwilling guest of the government, and the powers that be thought they were done with yet one more thorn in their sides. [...] Whatever the paper charges, Jim Bell was clearly arrested and prosecuted for loudly criticizing the government and for being abrasive and unrelenting in the process. Bell may be something of an eccentric, but he had enough moxie to make federal agents nervous. That's the worst crime as far as any government official is concerned. [...] *********** http://www.cluebot.com/article.pl?sid=01/04/11/238254 [...] Government prosecutors now appear to qualify as technical experts on the cypherpunk phenom, having scrutinized listmember behavior as ants under lenses. London told the jury yesterday that "the one unifying theme that defines someone as a cypherpunk on the Internet is the ability to encrypt mail." One could say the same thing about a NAI marketing flack, but that wouldn't be as quotable. It's all so sad and predictable and sad again. The cypherpunks list had its glory days: Wired magazine cover stories, blossoming technology, and, yes, even those damnable tentacles. Now it's become a convenient way for the Feds to land convictions. ***********