Adam Back wrote:
Re. the discussion of things like "first they came for Jim Bell, but I didn't speak up because I wasn't a tax protester, and then they came for Toto but I didn't speak up because I'm not crazy", etc.
The rules of the game from what I can see is that if one is outspoken, one either needs to be squeaky clean, or have enough funds to hire good lawyers, or to be anonymous.
[Notwithstanding my preference for the latter]... Is it the cypherpunk response to back off with our tail between our legs? I hope not. I smiled when I read about Toto's plans to appear in court in a perl-RSA T-shirt. Toto has balls so big he needs a wheel barrow to get around.
That is to say, I suspect that Jim would not have been locked up if he had not a) used false social security numbers, b) not been involved with fake courts, c) not collected IRS employees home addresses, and d) not planted the stink bomb.
And, more importantly, if crypto-anachy and removal of governments weren't on the cypherpunk agenda. Lets not pretend that Jim and Toto (and to a lesser degree the scrutinee J Choate) are not scapegoats for all of our opinions.
The AP rants are perfectly defensible free speech and free-wheeling political discussion.
Yes. "defensible", but they weren't defended. Jim pleaded. As would anyone in the face of sufficient pressure.
Similarly with Toto, the rants would have been ok, without a) the mockup non-functional "bomb" symbolically planted in the court house basement or where-ever it was, b) using real IRS employees, and judges names in his rant (apparently in support of Jim Bell), c) having tourettes syndrome.
The rants are ok anyway. They are clearly metaphors. But the prosecutors aren't playing fair. The man is "dangerous". And not because he wrote "bomb" in crayon on a cardboard box. But because he made waves. Waves that we caught. Waves that the straights and sheeple might catch.
His rants, when he was coherent, were well written, and humorously sarcastic observations about the increasingly facist state.
Just an observation.
Just.
Having blemishes, or being vulnerable in some way makes one an easy target for governments. Tourettes syndrome clearly isn't helping Toto's case -- they can basically lock him up as "crazy and dangerous" or whatever for as long as they like with no pretense of trial or anything if it came to it.
I thought this might be because of his excessive use of metaphor rather than a persecution of a medical condition unrelated to mental competence.
Clearly I think one should be able to say wtf one wants to, and in general I endeavor to do just that. But I am suggesting that cypherpunks individually stear clear of grey areas, such as ... Tim May style "I've got X number of now illegal armament Y",
I took the frequency of little Timmy May's 2nd ammendment rifs as a sign that he was clean on that score. (Tim always seems to be a couple of steps ahead).
My comment is that cypherpunks might be trying to hasten the demise of the nation state by deployment of tools of identity and financial privacy so that the individual can free himself from the burdens of the state, but cypherpunks themselves (at least the non-anonymous ones) should be squeaky clean.
Write code, let someone else do the tax protesting, gun law protesting, and let someone else have the personalised arguments with over-zealous government employees.
Financial privacy and anonymity code, is the most caustic anti-government expression one can utter.
Adam --
You seem a bit down at the end there.
print pack"C*",split/\D+/,`echo "16iII*o\U@{$/=$z;[(pop,pop,unpack"H*",<> )]}\EsMsKsN0[lN*1lK[d2%Sa2/d0<X+d*lMLa^*lN%0]dsXx++lMlN/dsM0<J]dsJxp"|dc`
Illegal crypto export. That's more like it!