Gag Broiled wrote:
Phillip M. Hallam-Baker <hallam@ai.mit.edu> wrote:
FC folk may find this interesting. What Jim Bell was charged with and admitted was planning and executing attacks on the IRS.
No, that's not correct.
Half-Baked knows that, but with his bowling-mentality, he thinks he has a better chance of throwing a strike if he puts a little spin on his balls, while twisting Jim's.
He was charged with (and plead guilty to) obstructing an IRS agent (26 USC 7212(a)) and misuse of a Social Security number (42 USC 408). The "attack" he admitted to executing consisted of applying a stinky chemical to the doormat of an IRS office. (see <http://jya.com/jimbell-dock4.htm> for more.)
Was that FELONY 'Making a bad smell'? I farted in an IRS office once (on purpose). Am I a Jim Bell co-conspirator? Are my armpits considered a felony or a misdemeanor? The government misuses my Social Security Number to steal my money. Where do I press charges? Can I place airline employees under citizen's arrest when they demand it?
It's interesting to note that the prosecutor and the defense concurred in recommending to the judge that Jim receive a sentence at the low end of the permissible range, while the probation department (which acts as an "attitude police") urged a sentence of 27 months, at or near the upper end of the applicable guidelines.
Jim's analysis of AP and its relationship to our legal/political/social structure was poor, and his behavior juvenile and indefensible. He did not, however, present a credible threat to the IRS, nor should he be punished more harshly because of his political views/ideas.
Winter winds blow both ways.
We should not let distaste/disgust for Jim's ideas and tactics blind us to the important legal and constitutional questions lurking beneath the surface of this investigation and prosecution - there's some possibility that the IRS used its investigation of Jim as a threat to other prolific authors on the Internet.
The government's armed assault on Ma and Pa Bell's residence took place within hours of an email being sent to him containing a rough draft of a chapter of an InterNet published manuscript describing and lauding Bell's AP system.
For example, copies of the press release announcing the raid on Jim's home were mailed, apparently from computer systems inside the IRS, to individuals active on the Cypherpunks list. The IRS has never before (or since) bothered to notify those individuals about criminal investigations which might otherwise be of interest.
It is interesting to note that the emails from treasury.gov constituted the same type of 'threat' that Bell was roundly accused of by government officials and the press.
One easy conclusion to reach is that the raid was intended to chill those individuals' expressive activity on the Net with respect to Jim and his ideas and the interplay between taxation and anonymity and cryptography.
The winter wind blows both ways. It is also easy to reach the conclusion that the AP-BOT results sent to the Oregonian and to the officials involved (via their internal email systems) played a hand in the judges 'vacation' before Bell's delayed sentencing. (Or that petty government officials involved in Bell's case were not impressed with the fact that they were becoming the source of valuable digital prizes in the AP-BOT community, without receiving the same protection as those who were behind the criminal malefeasance directed at Bell.)
Further, it's worth considering carefully the relationship between Jim's legitimate and constitutionally protected political speech and the criminal trial process. To what extent did Jim's outspokenness about the IRS influence its interest in investigating and prosecuting him? To what extent was his protected speech used to argue that he was ineligible for release on bail pretrial? To what extent did his extended pretrial incarceration pressure him to plead guilty?
Bell's persecution was straight out of the spook's political torture- indoctrination handbook. The only difference is that many aspects of the turning of Bell's thumbscrews were made public (just before tax-time, surprise, surprise).
To what extent will his protected speech be used to measure his compliance with the terms of his supervised release?
That was half of the purpose of his persecution. "We the people" were the other half of the sacrificial lamb targeted for cold-storage.
But cases like Jim's demonstrate that there's a considerable gulf between the high-school-civics-class idea that we are all equal before the law and the practical world of the criminal trial system. Jim was treated specially at every stage of this process because of what he's written, and that should make every person who values free political expression uncomfortable. Jim's case demonstrates that we're moving closer to a country where one can be prosecuted for thoughtcrime.
The corollary to this is that we are moving closer to a country where we will need to take up arms in both meatspace and cyberspace if we wish to defend our basic human rights. (Former NRA members are unlikely to take any more consolation from the government's expressed desire to only want to ban 'strong' crypto, than they were from the government's incremental announcements that they only want to ban criminal/assault/dangerous-looking/kind-of-scary/citizen's guns.) Rage Against The Machine Lock And Load Lock And Loll Human Gus-Peter-San <gold@toad.com>