On Tue, 20 May 1997, Tim May wrote:
About these charges I can of course say nothing. (Though I note that _my_ SS card says quite clearly it is for tax and SS purposes ONLY, and is not be used for identification. When I pointed this out down at the Department of Motor Vehicles, I was met with a shrug and told that if I did not give my SS number as ID number I would not get a registration tag, and that if I persisted in arguing this at the counter that "security" would be called in to have me removed or arrested or tortured or whatever. By the way, would it be useful guerilla theater exercise to have our SS numbers tattooed on our forearms?)
Since the damn things are used for ID and secret shared keys, etc. doing so would fuck up your own privacy. If you're gonna do that, encrypt it first. :)
Who of us hasn't brainstormed about how to attack the security of a system, or the security of a water supply? Who of us hasn't thought about how easy it would be drop LSD or botulins in the water supplies of a major site? Is this also called "contingency planning"? Or "tiger team analysis"?
I do that all the time at work when we take a new system and install it so it can be sealed. :)
It could be argued, and I hope it will be, that Bell was helping his friend Daly improve the security of his computer installation.
Let's pass it on to his lawyer.
(Not to mention the vastly more important argument to use: First Amendment protection of speech. Conspiracy and RICO charges are hardly valid when only speech is involved...I'm not a lawyer, but I believe there has to be a realistic expectation that a crime is being planned to be carried out, with some reasonable chance of being completed, before a "conspiracy" can be charged. A few friends sitting around brainstorming about threats, counterthreats, and possible attacks does not a conspiracy make.)
Is RICO even constitutional? I bet McCarthy is smiling... :(
Daly also told IRS agents that he had hypothetical discussions with Bell about contaminating water supplies and about making botulism toxin from green beans, the affidavit said.
And?
Yeah, well, the other day I was talking to someone about pissing in the water supply too... Birds that fly over it, do it all the time. Oh, and I'm gonna eat beans and fart, and pollute the air supply. :) That was the discussion. Will the arrest me next for that?
In the April 17 and 18 interviews with IRS agents, Daly said that as part of his job, he "has keys and direct access to the Portland Bull Run water treatment facility."
And? (I can see scared officials firing Daly, unless he is protected by other interventionist laws.)
Yeah, and I have the root password for the machines I've installed and run. Whoop Whoop.
Daly said Monday that the conversations that he and Bell had were merely "intellectual fun-and-games discussions" between old friends who enjoy technical things.
"There's a difference between reasonable freedom of speech and unreasonable probability of attack," Daly said. "Standing around and flapping our lips about how it would be funny is way different from even contemplating actual attack."
Exactly. Seems some folks don't understand the First Amendment...this seems to be endemic in America today, especially amongst public officials.
But will the judge and jury remember this?
Thursday, IRS agents searched the home of Robert East, a merchant radioman and a friend of Bell's. Among items seized was 3-foot length of carbon fiber.
Gee, could this carbon fiber be involved in his radio work? Gee.
Like maybe he was building a resistor? Wait, I forgot, resistance if futile, you will be assimilated.
The affidavit said East told agents that he and Bell had discussed "the possibility of putting the fibers down the air vents of a federal building" to kill its computers and about using the fiber against the IRS.
Sounds exactly like the sort of "what-if" theorizing that all technical people (and novelists, screenwriters, etc.) like to do. Also the staple of the "Infowar" mailing lists, not to mention "rec.pyrotechnics" sorts of newsgroups.
And how would a carbon fiber do that? Hey, I have a bottle of Tabasco(tm) sauce on my desk. Someone might come out of the woodwork and claim that I was planning to put that in the water supply. Hehehehe... :(
Free speech is under massive assalt in the Terror State of America.
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