Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com> wrote :
On Tue, Aug 28, 2001 at 05:28:24PM -0700, Ray Dillinger wrote:
For Tim: Why are you attempting to provoke public discussion about things that could get people jailed or worse for discussing them? It's interesting to see you post your "sweet spot" message and then call someone *else* an agent provocateur.
I suspect Bear has good intentions and may even honestly believe this, but it is nevertheless misleading.
Talking about the political implications of technologies -- and taking no actions! -- is protected by the full force of the First Amendment.
Johnson got in trouble for allegedly making direct threats of physical violence. Bell is in jail for most of the next decade because he crossed state lines and showing up at homes of current or former federal agents.
It is true that the Feds are monitoring cypherpunks closely, and it is also probably true that without the stalking charges, they may have found other charges to levy against Bell. It is also true that if you embrace AP-type concepts, they may pay closer attention to you. But even given the tattered First Amendment, there is still a difference between speech and action.
-Declan
Bear may not be as far off the mark as you think. Remember back when the hot news of the day was militia groups how advocating the violent overthrow of the government and playing soldier in the woods could constitute intent? Can that twisted reasoning be applied to advocating the use of code to obsolete the government and then actually creating code? Should the political speech and coding action be separated? Is participating in both risky? I consider code to be publishing and speech but look at some of the recent GRUsa activity that addresses that issue. Get ready for "to code is to act." Whoops, it's here. Just title your application "Espionage Communications Suite with Government Overthrow Features" and package the speech and the act up nice and neat for the GRU. This can't really be the case, can it? Mike This little gizmo is not new but I like it and it's only $30 at an AT&T Wireless store. It looks like it would be a nice companion ( assuming one could make a very tiny uP-based adapter ) for an iPaq. I find those folding kybs to be ugly. http://www.ericsson.com/infocenter/news/The_Chatboard.html