At 12:27 PM 4/6/96 -0800, Timothy C. May wrote:
This model, is, I contend, the model with which courts are familiar. They know that Alice can retrieve the funds, so they simply order her to. If she does not comply, contempt of court. Q.E.D.
What of a different model? What if, say, her funds are in a "time lock deposit," with the bank unwilling or even unable (cryptographic protocols involving multiple key holders) to retrieve the funds until, say, 2010? Even if she is being tortured to death and pleading with the Gemeinschaftbank of Zurich to please, pretty please, release her funds, they cannot.
It may take some convincing, and some education of the court (a la the education that is slowly happening, as in the CDA case), but eventually it will be realized that "contempt of court" is not applicable.
I look at it this way: It is inappropriate to look just at the desire of the court and its sanctions, it is necessary to study what kind of "crimes" are normally dealt with in such a fashion, and why they need to be crimes in the first place. Over time, technology is dramatically increasing our protections: From locks to alarms to monitoring systems to remote cameras, with bank accounts that are secure from ordinary criminals, we are becoming less and less dependant on government for our security. Since the ostensible purpose of courts is nominally to protect us, if those protections begin to be replaced by technology the logical conclusion is that courts will become less numerous and less powerful. The problem is, that isn't happening, and the reason is that organizations tend to act in ways to protect their own power and influence. In fact, the average citizen is subject to far more theft of his assets BY THE GOVERNMENT than by common criminals, so at some point we have to realize that the government is now a net problem, rather than being a net solution. I think that most crimes that subpoenas would normally be used for are probably not crimes at all, and are probably "malum prohibitum," not "malum in se" crimes. And in the future, they would likely be used to harass political enemies, as harassment was done in the 1950's and 60's. This means, for anybody of a libertarian bent, that it would actually be better if the government could be rendered incapable of enforcing them. Naturally, governments and courts will resist, but that will be irrelevant. Jim Bell jimbell@pacifier.com