From: Adam Back [SMTP:aba@dcs.ex.ac.uk] Clearly I think one should be able to say wtf one wants to, and in general I endeavor to do just that. But I am suggesting that cypherpunks individually stear clear of grey areas, such as say creative tax minimisation, Duncan Frissel style "it's not illegal to do blah with social security numbers", Tim May style "I've got X number of now illegal armament Y", (unless you also have the money for good lawyers) and so on, whether technically legal or not, as one would be taking above average risks in doing so, because governments are watching this list, and a number of it's subscribers.
I agree with Adam on sticking to legally achievable goals-- or at least legally achievable without needing unlimited funds to feed the army of lawyers that will be needed to keep you and your cohorts out of prison. To me that would include the realm of projects related to strong crypto, electronic cash, anonymity and privacy-- vague as those topics may be. That said... I was at the meeting in July with Jim when Toto showed up. It was my first attendance at an Austin Cpunk meeting and I was looking forward to working on some great projects with some hopefully great local folks. To me Toto showing up was simply a very interesting road sign (or graffiti) on the path to achieving pragmatic, long-living "cypherpunks write code" projects the first of which was to be the Crypto Conference that we were hoping to host and that we were discussing at that meeting with members of EF Texas. BTW: Whatever happended to the Classified Ad project?? Jim fought for that but it fell apart when the focus of the conference was was moved by another local group to a non-crypto topic. We took the synergies from the remains of conference project and started work on a Cypherpunks meta-web-archive this time with a joint effort by myself, some fellow programmers and the Austin Cpunks. This project as well started strong out of the gates but lost steam around the first corner. In part it was due to looming, work related project deadlines-- as far as I know none involved in the local projects are retired, Austin hitech fatcats (yet). But mostly this last project and the local meetings halted I think due to Jim's relating to the group the events that were happening with him regarding Toto. I think the really sad thing here is not that we didn't rise up as a group to stop the government's inquiries of Jim with regards to the Toto case but simply that we individually offered very limited support directly to Jim himself. And from speaking with Jim and reading his emails it appears that the support was in the form of a referral to lawyers (who apparently were not ready to do any _pro bono_ work) and an apology from myself for lack of offer of assistance when it became obvious to me that the long standing local group had not offered assistance. I think Jim did a great job with the local group and it's truly a sad indictment against the relationships we had (or thought we had) in the group where our "sponsor" is put in a spotlight for acting as a primary for the group that we're supposedly active in and there's no show of support... Again, not with intent to support Toto, or thwart government inquiries, but just to check to see how Jim's doing under the strain of possible government scrutiny. Anyhow the local group does look to be dead. I'd still like to get group coding projects and the like accomplished while I'm in Austin and suspect they will still happen and hopefully with Jim and some of the other local folks involved. But I don't think there will be an "Austin Cpunk" group after this. I'd be glad to have someone prove me wrong. That's my $0.02 on the events of the past few months.... Now back to reality. waves, C.G. -- Carlos Macedo Gomes gomes@navigo.com a Navigo farmer