-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- At 11:07 AM 5/19/97 -0800, Tim May wrote:
Whether it stands up in court depends on the charges. As for you being willing to file a lawsuit that will make their heads spin, good for you. But to win a lawsuit, one has to have a case. And the laws are written broadly these days, and I doubt such a case would be won.
It might be hard to win lawsuits *against* the Feds although Steve Jackson Games did and other false arrest suits have succeeded. The reverse of this is that the Feds would have a very hard time winning a criminal case based on mass arrests at a Cypherpunks meeting. They have lost loads of First Amendment busts over the years. They have also lost the last few sedition cases they've brought even though the targets (white supremecists) were less popular than we would prove to be in court. Many of us also have the intellectual and financial resources to mount an effective defense. They would lose.
(Did anything ever come of the police actions at the "2600" meetings in D.C. a few years back? I don't recall all of the details, but I gather the cops either moved in and made arrests, or maybe just watched and took down license plate numbers.)
Everything dismissed. Just harrassment. There were some actual arrests for tresspassing. Cypherpunks meetings, however, are held with the permission of the building owners so such charges would fail in our case. I think the Feds case against JB is probably pretty weak. Though we don't know the extent of his actions in the physical (as opposed to the spiritual) realm. Arrests are frequently used to intimidate but dismissals or failure to prosecute are very common in cases involving political dissent. DCF -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 5.0 beta Charset: noconv iQCVAwUBM4CtQ4VO4r4sgSPhAQHHUQQAl0ksn2MMXYv/2qIPSscGjC9QmD+XrDPS oNUYEERBZfWw1P6tcOaiUsu9p0r9zbGm+zoP8/2XwQBgvEcSQYrGJeAfO7BNEGe1 yH2DPPTiD8P5DtlcW9UI3OY5VMXVu3VR4TnwW4aCttLIPoq/eLqx6GwF/p/fa8Ye A/xhFaCsLU4= =O64h -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----