We offer a recent letter from Jim Bell that describes prison and his prospects:

I gather that Jim has been sentenced recently during my absence from the list, can you tell me what charges he was convicted on and how long he was sentenced to? Datacomms Technologies data security Paul Bradley, Paul@fatmans.demon.co.uk Paul@crypto.uk.eu.org, Paul@cryptography.uk.eu.org Http://www.cryptography.home.ml.org/ Email for PGP public key, ID: FC76DA85 "Don`t forget to mount a scratch monkey"

At 4:27 AM -0700 9/22/97, John Young wrote:

We offer a recent letter from Jim Bell that describes prison and his prospects:

http://jya.com/jimbell4.htm

It is published against his wishes, maybe. Read the letter to see the fear (or caginess) loss of freedom teaches.

And John Young, at that URL, writes: "[Below my reason for publishing Jim's letter. JY] XXX, I'd like to publish Jim's letter. I feel that I've been trapped into silence by his letter, by the Feds, through threats to Jim. And that he may be cooperating with them to understandably save his own ass, and thereby wittingly or unwittingly threatening others, including me, or at the very least chilling public discussion of his case. As with the IRS spam many of us received, Jim's letter is meant to isolate us and leave us uneasy about whose doing what to who, and thus making us easy to pick off one by one, and to squeal on others who we've been induced to believe is squealing on us, or to distance ourselves from, as Jim is now doing. Mainly, though, such crap makes us shut up and behave, and that's the lonely dark cell of self-censorship, self-imprisonment. The letter needs to be made public, or at least I need to speak up about it to get free of the trap. I'll put it on my Web site, stating that it came anonymously. John --end quoted material-- John is indeed correct that the 6-8 month "delay" in sentencing Bell is designed to send a "message." Both by letting the process linger, and by, perhaps, inducing Bell to "remember" things that implicate others in the whole AP thing. And of course to get him to "repent" and engage in the sad display of self-criticism, Mao-style, we see in Bell's words. Very sad. We long ago lost the "speedy trial" aspect of our system...even when OJ thought a speedy trial would help him (as it probably did), the trial did not get underway until more than 7 months after the murders (and of course it last another 9 months). More typical is a trial date set a year or two after the arrests. (Granted, often this is at the urging of the accused's side.) Now we are seeing _sentencing_ delayed by 6-8 months, while Bell rots in jail. Exactly what did the presiding judge lack to pronounce sentence on Bell the same day, or perhaps within a few days, of his conviction? The answer can only be that they wish to break Bell, to get him to reveal names and messages, and to draw out the process to maximize the publicity. --Tim May The Feds have shown their hand: they want a ban on domestic cryptography ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^1398269 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."