At 12:46 PM -0400 10/12/00, Declan McCullagh wrote:

This is from a bill that both the House and Senate passed (yesterday):

Whoever knowingly provides or obtains the labor or services of a person...by means of the abuse or threatened abuse of law or the legal process, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both.

URL: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d106:h.r.03244:

I can imagine some abuses of this, in workplace situations or divorce cases...

As Jim Burnes said in his post this morning, increasing fascism may be a Good Thing. (Though I've been watching the escalation of fascism for 35+ years and it hasn't seemed to have brought us any closer to the point where patriots will rise up and take back their country. A few nests of statists blown up, a few corrupt politicians assassinated, but not much else.) As for this new law, it's par for the course. It's Yet Another Law to pressure the proles with. Used as a bargaining chip. Tell me, anyone, will Bill Clinton ever face _any_ actual prison time for lying to a court, for suborning perjury by his staff, for threatening Kathleeen Willey and others? Is anyone in the White House facing imprisonment for illegally obtaining and using confidential FBI files for political purposes? The Feds are anxious to prosecute poltical opponents for merely obtaining Social Security Numbers illegally, but do nothing when the White House does it. (And what of the U.S. Marshal's service releasing the SSN of _me_ and including innuendo that I am planning to assassinate a federal judge? Believe me, when this happened I went on high alert. I figured a set up raid was coming.) This new law cited above, one of thousands, will be used precisely by the Power Elite to suppress their enemies. --Tim May -- ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.