The Washington Post portrayal posted courtesy of P. Ferguson is beyond deeply disturbing, and borders on the horrifyingly shocking. Particularly the sniper aim on Weaver's wife--around her children!--I found brutally, heinously barbarian. One wonders if law enforcement is composed of responsible servants or maurading mercenaries. I'm really stunned not to see any reaction in the popular press so far to this editorial, but I suspect it won't sow ripples but hurtle shearing shockwaves through the media for years to come. However, perhaps just a few weeks have passed since T.C. May admonished and chastised various members for `demonizing' opponents, and then posts a few statements as follows (the sheer bluntness reminds me of the long-dead cries of Murderous Thug on this list, and I feel compelled to respond by blunting the mad, chaotic, rambling, and unfocused shooting):
The killing of that Fed in Idaho was fully justified, as the jury just confirmed. The BATF, DEA, Marshal's Service, and their kind have essentially become a Gestapo-like band of secret police. They raid homes without proper warrants (Phil Karn has told us of the San Diego case), they entrap innocents, they use high tech satellite imagery to locate plots of land they want for various purposes and then trump up charges (the Oxnard-Santa Monica case where the County wanted a guy's land and then drew up drug charges, raided him, and killed him...no drugs were found), and they seize computers and modems of folks like Steve Jackson without bothering to do their homework.
Killing justified? Gestapo-like band of secret police? Yeeks. First of all, please resist the temptation to tar a vast number of law enforcement agents with the same brush under the polarizing heading `they'. It is more dangerous to see enemies everywhere than only somewhere (hm, I think the inspiration for that quote came from your own words). Unless they all showed up at an annual Loot & Pillage Conference and traded techniques and swapped success stories, my suspicions wouldn't be aroused. But as it stands your paragraph starts out with the explosion of `Gestapo band of secret police' and ends with a limp whine of `without bothering to do their homework'. As it stands, there is actually a bit of hostility between different law enforcement branches (best documented, I think, in Hacker Crackdown by Sterling, as in FBI vs. local police forces). This animosity prevents the various groups from wholeheartedly colluding, for which we can be ecstatically thankful for. Yes, the individual agencies are extremely dangerous in some of their recent actions, but this is more adequately explained in terms of local stupidity and imperialism than global malice and conspiracy. Ah, but the most dangerous call comes next:
And perhaps their next target will be "crypto-terrorists" like us. After all, many of us advocate overthrowing the fascist/socialist government (I know I do, and many of you do, too), and many of us believe strong crypto is the key ingredient for bypassing tax systems, for trading weapons technology details with others (how long before some of us are charged with aiding and abetting the enemy?), and for creating a transnational cyberspace.
Uhm, I think if law enforcement officials were at all alarmed by our presence we would have encountered rather obvious signs by now. But look how little interference has been erected in front of cypherpunkesque adventurism. Cypherpunk remailers have only gone down for extremely mundane reasons. A rather feeble letter was sent to the operator of soda.berkeley.edu suggesting in the most delicate terms that something might be amiss (for which there was great ensuing fireworks, our nervous-edgy heavy barrage of artillery and cannons aimed at a wandering rabbit). *Nothing* has come of the Mycotronx postings like a Tianamen Square tank-rolling clampdown massacre response by the Establishment. We don't even have the whimper of a single misguided officer pursuing a lone local vigilante justice revenge power trip. We got spectacular coverage in Wired and the New York Times and not even a sneeze from a real red-blooded shifty-eyed Enemy in Black.
The Feds must surely come to see us as the enemy.
The `Feds' are actually numerous and disparate agencies, have created their own realities that they live in, and so far have almost, apparently, *completely* ignored the Cacaphony of the Cypherpunks. I believe the situation is that the pillars we are targeting most directly (e.g. the NSA, FBI) are precisely those that are most limited in meeting and engaging us on our terms of warfare of a public-relations campaign. When they say anything in the media they sound absolutely ridiculous -- the FBI with their `a lot of dead bodies lying around' and `cryptography as nitroglycerin,' Denning's `I'm not sure if people should be informed' come to mind. Their clandestine preference is our strongest asset. We can advance by being loud and obnoxious and they cannot (a sort of Perotian-Clintonian relationship). So far I think we have exercised it effectively, galliantly, and perhaps even superbly. But as soon as we make statements that bespeak fanatic paranoia and dangerous and polarizing rhetorical posturing we will be swiftly discredited or hammered.
We need to be as prepared as Randy Weaver was!
This is a rather irresponsible and dangerous sentiment and metaphor. I urge you to reconsider. Which cypherpunks are volunteering to barricade themselves from the police in their houses? To defy some court proceedings because of `distrust' of the prosecution? To arm their children with rifles for `defense'? Mr. Weaver was apparently subject to the most grave miscarriage of law enforcement in many years, perhaps only second to the Waco massacre in recent history if reported elements of the recent story hold up. But the fact remains that he refused to go to court and completely defied *our* `system' that has been erected to defend the innocent. He managed to delay going to court by a few months with absolutely disastrous and horrible payment. In fact, one could argue quite convincingly that Weaver was very clearly a victim of his own paranoia. If he had trusted the courts to minimize his plight the gruesome horror show might have been averted. Perhaps not. But are we cypherpunks now going to take on the American Judicial System? Dissolute focus means dissolute energy. Finally, I would like to take up the question of the Weaver Debacle in relation to the nation's media. First, anything this horrendous takes *years* to penetrate and percolate through the American consciousness and media, so we should be patient. It is like the trickle of Chinese water torture--one can go insane in the process. The fallout from the Steve Jackson games case has taken that long. (This is not to discourage public relations but to encourage it.) Secondly, the American public is actually firmly supportive of some of these bloody miscarriages. For example, Reno's approval/popularity soared after her public post-Waco culpability speeches. That is, we have met the enemy, and he is us. We *must* change American attitudes if we are to thwart future egregious law enforcement violations. And in this quest I think there is nothing but grave pallor in elevating Weaver as an epitomizing icon of our cause.