Tim "What you mean *WE*, white man" May writes:
Whom are the "we" in this "We really need to put something together..."?
I certainly don't plan to be part of the "we," and this sounds perilously close to the notion that members of this mailing list are part of some sort of collective entity, with goals, charters, action plans, officers, oh my.
Horrors.
As for info on Jim Bell, the article by Declan is widely available, and is quite informative. As for elaborating it further, or including more boilerplate, this seems pointless. Anyone knew to the story can read Declan's article. Anyone seeking even more information presumably knows how to use search engines and should be able to find the various essays and articles directly.
Well, as I have often said, "There is no such thing as objective market-driven journalism." As much as I admire Declan's expository skills, we both know he isn't going to deliberately bite the hand that is holding his paycheck.
Sounds good to me. Let us know when you've finished it.
(If I sound testy, sorry. It's just that it's been a while since I've heard this "we should get together and so suchandsuch" stuff. The notion that Cypherpunks are some sort of collective is not real useful. Nor is building a page devoted to Bell's "one trick pony" terribly interesting. Yes, people are clueless and ask "Who is Jim Bell?"
Jim Bell is an example of an individual screwed by the government using overly vague statues for alleged crimes which amounted to little more than a few high school type pranks. He took names of assholes who harrassed him, gave a made-up number to a few people, and made the IRS doormat smell bad. How much, if any taxes, were evaded as a result of one of these charges isn't even an issue.
So? Tell them to use search engines; a HotBot search on "James Dalton Bell" just returned 1078 matches, several of them on the first page directly applicable. Obviously various Boolean searches on AP, Bell, IRS, etc. would act in the predictable way.)
It is in the collective interests of Crypto-Anarchists that information depicting the government's true colors should be available in a form which can be accessed by even the terminally innumerate. This means a hyperlink with the words "Jim Bell" on it, in a frequently browsed location. -- Mike Duvos $ PGP 2.6 Public Key available $ enoch@zipcon.com $ via Finger $ {Free Cypherpunk Political Prisoner Jim Bell}