At 3:19 PM -0700 4/4/01, David Honig wrote:
At 10:29 PM 4/4/01 +0200, Anonymous wrote:
...
If asked the question "have you ever communicated with [third party]", could one plead the fifth if that communication was made through a pseudonym, and tying that pseudonym to oneself could potentially be incriminating?
Indeed the 5th is up to you to decide ---after all, only you know what you've done. You can only be forced to talk to a GJ if given immunity for anything you say, by arrangement beforehand; I think this came up during Monicagate. JY or DM could easily take the 5th if they so chose.
How would anyone (including themselves or their council) prove to them that any answer associating them with JB would not be incriminating in the next wave?
Inasmuch as I think the Feds are trying to put together a RICO case for Cypherpunks being some kind of "continuing criminal conspiracy," it would seem that _any_ testimony before a GJ, whether about past membership, current membership, contacts with others, authorship of articles, etc. could constitute "self incrimination" for the impending Federal case. "Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of the notorious and infamous organization known as "the Cypherpunks"?" Unless given use immunity (as I understand the legal jargon, given that IANAL), anything admitted to is fodder for the Main Case, yet to come. --Tim May -- Timothy C. May tcmay@got.net Corralitos, California Political: Co-founder Cypherpunks/crypto anarchy/Cyphernomicon Technical: physics/soft errors/Smalltalk/Squeak/agents/games/Go Personal: b.1951/UCSB/Intel '74-'86/retired/investor/motorcycles/guns