Re: Poison Pill Defense (fwd)

----- Forwarded message from Peter Trei -----

From cpunks@manifold.algebra.com Wed May 21 09:12:25 1997 Message-Id: <199705211410.KAA03539@www.video-collage.com> Comments: Authenticated sender is From: "Peter Trei" Organization: Process Software To: cypherpunks@algebra.com Date: Wed, 21 May 1997 10:21:43 -6 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Subject: Re: Poison Pill Defense Reply-to: trei@process.com CC: trei@www.video-collage.com Priority: normal X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Win32 (v2.42)

nobody@huge.cajones.com (Huge Cajones Remailer) writes:

I hear from anonymous correspondents that the following technique has been successfully deployed among some militia members and cypherpunks who fear raids on their private property. Apparently the technique was originally invented by a biotech lab that the FDA was planning to shut down in an uncivil manner when Kessler first came to power. The lab was never raided.

Preliminary: choose a suitable viral agent. [...]

Step one: immunize household members against this agent.

Several things come to mind in reading this. 1. This has *no* crypto-related content. 2. This guy has been watching too many re-runs of 'Mission Impossible'. The scheme is Rube-Goldberg and full of potential failure modes, ranging up to and including the accidental death of the implementor and his/her household. The techniques involved are complex, difficult, dangerous, and expensive. 3. This is not a 'defense'. * It won't stop a raid; if it's deployment is kept secret, it's deterrence value is zero. If it's deployment is publicized, then it is ineffective, since the raiders will take appropriate countermeasures (and announcement of it's deployment is *very* good grounds for a raid). * It won't work to conceal whatever you had that was worth concealing, in the event of a raid. All it is a scheme for getting petty vengence, and even if works perfectly, will get you murder or attempted murder charges tacked onto whatever you were raided for. Only an idiot (such as our anonymous poster) would even think of deploying such a scheme. 4. If I were an agent provocateur, attempting to make the members of this list look dangerous, I'd encourage them to discuss topics like this. Jim Bell's advocacy of AP may have been legal, but it sure didn't endear him to LEAs. I seriously suspect that this thread may have been planted by someone with the intent of discrediting the list. Peter Trei Disclaimer: I speak only for myself. ----- End of forwarded message from Peter Trei -----