The occasion of Jim Bell's arrest provides an opportunity to consider a number of points: Are Federal Agents Evil? Why is there an attempt to persecute Jim Bell, one that has many similarities to the Olympic Park Bombing rush-to-judgment, Ruby Ridge, Waco, OK City, etc.? Are we to believe that government agents are 'evil,' or True Believers that _we_ (those who are _not_ true believers) are evil? I personally think not. I think we are seeing a phenomenon that is rather simple--government agents will tend to pursue cases that may get them recognition or promotion. People like Jim Bell pass some mobile threshold where their case is media 'hot' or sexy enough to make it worth pursuing--the Feds get a collar and media attention, a prosecutor gets similar benefits, judges are notoriously easy to inflame for the proper paperwork to be obtained, etc. Are the rest of the cypherpunks at risk? Looking at it with my game theorist hat on, I suspect not--while Tim May has been pushing the envelope recently, I don't think he's crossed any line would allow the appearance of a 'good bust,' nor has anyone else on the list (to my direct knowledge). I think we're witnessing a bit of the same mentality that literally did allow the operation of the Nazis--they're just doing their job, just following orders, just being part of their bureaucracy, with perhaps a few True Believers to leaven the mix. Technology vs. Public Relations/Propaganda Cypherpunks write code, we hear it often enough as the credo of the 'movement.' On the other hand, as valuable a social service as it actually has been, the war is being fought on other terms. Crypto has been characterized as 'offensive' technology, in two senses of the term--a regulated weapons technology, and a socially unacceptable act. This manifests in the 'what have you got to hide' mentality, coupled with the trotting out of the Four+ Horsemen. We're losing this part of the war, and the cutting of more code isn't going to help us one bit. We need to turn the public perception around. What we're seeing in this case is a rather rapid erosion of the legal principles of an expectation of privacy (I won't engage in the rather lengthy discussion of this, but I recommend the interested parties do take the time to read in a good law library, or hunt down the materials on the Bork nomination to the Supreme Court). We've become a society that is expected to publicly air our dirty laundry, to march onto a television talk-show and expose our faults, foibles, and felonies. We need to fight back in ways that communicate to Joe Sixpack, also known as the Common Man--we all have secrets, we all have things we don't want people to know. Build the database! Get the testimonials! Let me briefly mention some of the sorts of need for privacy, secrecy, anonymity that are socially acceptable, and which we need to use to reinforce our own message: --AIDS testing; --Illness diagnosis, such as cancer; --Financial information: credit card numbers, bank balances, net worth; --Dropping the dime on crime: mob witnesses, corporations, your noisy neighbor who abuses their kids but owns a shotgun; --Donations to needy causes, but not wanting everyone to have their hand out; --Personal habits: alcoholism, drug use, gambling addiction, sexual preferences; --Common law privileges: confessional, physician or attorney relation to their client. In short, we all have things we want to remain secret, and we certainly don't want them to be 'exposed,' or to fall into the wrong hands. We need to take the issue back from the criminalization of having secrets to a place where crypto is viewed as a defensive technology--we're entitled to it, and our privacy. Crypto vs. the Government This is the biggest area of contention. The cypherpunk case is that strong, unescrowed cryptography is essential--we have no reason to assume that government is our friend (pull out the file of long-term government abuses here, from using the IRS to pursue political targets to the mail-opening programs of the FBI/CIA), and more to the point, this isn't a 'local' issue that is categorized by a singular stance on the part of the U.S. government. The cryptosystems we build and promote are used in places where they protect human rights workers, economic security and competitiveness, privacy, etc. The Internet and the tools are global, so we're on a battlefield that also includes: -Europe, including the Former Soviet Republics and Bosnia, where strong crypto is critical for freedom-loving movements; -Asia, where users of strong crypto use it to prevent competitive intelligence or organized espionage programs from impacting on their business, in particular, from actions of those U.S. 'allies' Japan, Korea, China; -the Middle East, where strong crypto protects human rights workers, businesses, and individuals who have an un-Islamic taste for things like pornography, or news; see 'rogue' States like Iran, but also U.S. 'allies' like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Israel, Kuwait, etc. And the global battle means that we have to set an example, allow access, and fight those efforts on our own turf (does anyone really think that Asian or European competitive intelligence or espionage efforts don't also take place on American soil?). The U.S. government has made good use of the insinuation that if we have things to hide, then in a free and open democracy, we must be actively engaged in criminal activity. Certainly, strong cryptography of many sorts is being used to protect criminal activity. It is also a principle upon which the American system is based that you don't deprive the rights and freedom of the majority, those who have not committed any crime, merely in an effort to pursue the felonious. This is why you still need a properly executed warrant to search an area which has an expectation of privacy (which _is_ being slowly eroded as a legal principle, which we need to point out as a trend). As Tim May likes to point out, there are an increasing number of laws that individuals can be pursued under, with ever more general levels of interpretation. Convictions make convicts. Bureaucracies tend to grow, seeking more power for themselves, until 'that which is not compulsory is illegal, and that which is not illegal is compulsory.' Students of history are well aware of what comes next in the cycle-- revolution. My only observation on this is that America has always been willing to speed through trend curves, and it looks like she is flooring the accelerator in this case--from growing State, to global Power, to dying Empire. Think of it like an organic system, and like any entity, it reacts poorly to what it rightly views as being a threat to its own survival--cypherpunks among many. Sign me: A Man With Many Secrets and Much to Hide Michael Wilson 5514706@mcimail.com