Frankly, Tim, I expected a whole lot more intelligence, and less vehemence (well, maybe I didn't expect less vehemence :-)) in all this, and the following is a perfect case in point. At 1:11 pm -0500 on 11/19/97, Tim May cites the exception which proves the rule in a feeble attempt at historical revisionism:
At 11:38 AM -0700 6/22/97, Robert Hettinga wrote:
The reason I ask is, given events of the past few days, it may be time to start standing up for our friends, no matter how unsavory their ideas. ... Tim was talking earlier here about how this kind of accountability should have been held, more stringently, for the people who burned children in Waco, and who shot them at Ruby Ridge. Maybe it's time to hold people who commit capital crimes on the state's behalf to understand that the legal sword cuts both ways. If so, I think the best way to start this is to do it in manageable increments, and ratchet up the pressure from there. To have zero tolerence for even the smallest offenses, starting with the jailing of Mr. Bell.
Wow, Tim. You're trying to cite this as some kind of *counter*example? It's like you didn't even *read* the above in your following comments. You did, didn't you? Are you deliberately making this *easy* or something? Oh, well, here's my answer, anyway. :-). Which is: Fine. All of the above makes sense to me. Still. The people who committed murder at Waco and Ruby Ridge *have* committed a capital crime. It just hasn't been proven in a court of law. Yet. I'm saying, above, and again here, that if they break the law (notice what I said up there about the *legal* sword cutting both ways) it's time to put them in jail. That's still completely doable, even in the cases of the people from Waco and Ruby Ridge who have gotten off so far. It'll just take longer because our nation-state is in the hands of freedom-hating liberals instead of, say, libertarians or somebody like them. People still win these kinds of legal fights decades later, because they're right, and because, in the end, the truth usually wins. Reality is not optional. All it takes is determination. And maybe some money. I'm also saying, above, that it's time to start fighting back, (legally, if you notice :-)) when the government comes to harrass and jail people just because they're talking about using cryptography, and, it seemed to me that Bell's case was as good a time as any to start doing it. In other words, "Bell's in jail. Fine. People should do what they can to get Bell out of jail. Even if we don't like Bell." Frankly, what we've done, myself included, hasn't been good enough, if anyone around here crying 'apostasy' has probably noticed. Bell has sat in jail, without bail (or anyone to bail him out, for that matter) the entire time, and, bless his loony heart, he's probably "ratted out" half the internet by now, and whether they believe him or not remains to be seen. That sucks. It shouldn't have happend. To the extent that anyone doesn't help, or at least doesn't get the truth out, they're just as responsible for Bell sitting in jail as anyone else is. Yeah, I know. Collectivist nonsense. Sue me. :-). More to the point, it's still stupid, as Tim insists on doing, to try to provoke a violent confrontation, or by threatening federal judges, or, if no one pays attention to him then, whatever else he can think up. Frankly, that's the kind of stuff that put Bell himself in jail. I suppose learning would have occured out there in Corrolitos, but, apparently, it hasn't. Heck, it's also becoming apparent, from Tim's archival scholarship, that *reading* doesn't occur in Corrolitos, either. Spend some more time on the john, or something, Tim. Anyway, there are lots of better ways to fill the jails, and it seems to me that most cypherpunks I've met aren't the "fill the jails" type, anyway.
To paraphrase Hettinga himself, "I'm _telling!"
In a word, from Hettinga himself, "Bullshit." Here's Tim again, saying that I'm in cahoots with Billarybub hirself. No, Tim. I'm not a tory, or a snitch, or whatever. Nor, as you paranoiacly insinuate later on, have I gotten The Letter, The Briefing, or The Fucking-Anything-Else, either. You have seen here on cypherpunks all I have said to anybody on the entire issue. Frankly, it's the only place where it matters to say it, because *here's* where you're making such a doomsaying, sabrerattling fool of yourself.
It appears hear that Bob is not only posting "off subject, non-coding" stuff, but that he appears to be calling for taking action against the officials and judges in the Bell case.
Right, Tim. Officials. Not Judges. And *legal* action, not 'executive' action, as you and Dalton Trumbo like to put it. If some dolt at the IRS or any other member of the alphabet soup "taskforce" that hauled Bell away that morning actually broke the law, then they should be punished. And they probably didn't break the law, just "aggressively enforced" it, which probably won't land them in jail. Which, also, sounds vaguely like the scenario that would probably happen to you yourself, if you keep rattling their cage like Bell did. Finally, if I talked about any 'action' at all above it was to get Bell out of jail, which, Tim, I didn't see *you* doing anything about, either.
Yeah, I know. It's me making work for someone else. Nonetheless: Anyone out there want to do this?
"Will no one rid me of that judge?"?
Actually, what happened after that, in no particular order, and if you remember at all (maybe you should read the archives, too, Tim :-)), is that John Young started getting court documents the case and publishing them. I asked here if anyone wanted to go visit Bell in jail, in exchange for free admission to FC98, and Blanc volunteered to put together a group to go. Only, by that time, Bell wasn't taking any visitors, was being moved, and, now, apparently, has refused mail. Blanc, and John, and Greg Broiles, and I, and others, have been talking about the details of all this offline. I volunteered last week to go try to raise money to pay for the cost of documents, etc., and John said that the cost isn't that much, so far. And, of course, Blanc still gets in free at FC98. :-). Frankly, it's a shame that it wasn't possible to get Bell some legal representation, because, clearly, he needed it, as anyone here would probably agree by now. Doesn't matter if you disagree with Bell, or with using lawyers for that matter. :-). If Bell had been able to stay out of the clutches of the jailers (and social workers :-)), he probably wouldn't be as messed up as he probably is by now, and, "Thanksgiving cypherpunk massacre" or no, he might now be turning in anyone he can think of to get out. Being stuck with a bunch of social workers and psychiatrists may do that to a body... Being prepared to contribute for lawyers for other people, is, by the way, what people should now be thinking about, in case some other person, even another indigent loon like Bell, gets hauled in. Think about it as legal insurance? Yeah, I know. Collectivist nonsense. It's far better to hole up on a hillside and pump a few more hundred rounds through your Glock instead, right? Anything but figuring out how to get code written, anyway :-).
Physician, heal thyself.
Take a physic yourself, Tim. Maybe it'll improve your ability to read, if not your disposition. :-). One more thing, to everyone else. It sucks that we have to mess around with lawyers at all. The solution is code, not lawyers. Right? I mean, maybe it makes more sense to just cut people like Bell off and let them flap in the breeze. Triage. Evolution in action. "They aren't *really* cypherpunks" sounds like an awfully good answer, but, to follow on to what I said in the original posting, anyone who talks about cypherpunk ideas here, much less goes out and (apparently) tries to use them, is probably going to call themselves a cypherpunk, whether the rest of us on the list claim those people or not. Certainly, when these people find themselves in jail for one reason or another, especially if the prosecution goes on a crypto witch hunt, those folks going to "reach out" and claim us, whether we want them to or not, as Bell's case may still, in the faintest possibility, turn out to show us. And no, I still don't think the Alphabet Gang is decending on Corrolitos this Thursday, just because Tim says so. So, what I'm talking about here, maybe some kind of cryptography defense fund, is not offense, it's defense, self-defense, like some people keep a gun for self-defense. A defense of cryptography itself, if you will. Not only to prevent cryptographic abolition laws by going to court to overturn them, but, much more useful, to make sure that whatever cryptographic component of someone's otherwise criminal activities, (like Bell's Assassination Politics essay, versus his alleged physical attacks on IRS and law offices) is not used as a pretext to prevent strong cryptography from happening, much less to exacerbate that person's legal circumstances. Let me know, offline, if you're interested in this. Like any of my other crazy ideas, if enough people are interested, then it might be worth trying to do, and we can put together something more um, restrained than yet another broadside in this seemingly endless flamefest. Cheers, Bob Hettinga ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah@shipwright.com), Philodox e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' The e$ Home Page: http://www.shipwright.com/ Ask me about FC98 in Anguilla!: <http://www.fc98.ai/>