Just because I love beating a dead horse... Back in June we had the argument over whether or not Phil Z should be worried because of the threat of prosecution hanging over him. And a prosecutor (?) by the name of Brian Davis as well as Tim and others thought that I was wrong to say that I would enjoy the process because of the opportunities for verbal abuse and point scoring that I would have were I under threat of prosecution in a case the government couldn't win. (Mostly pure 1st Amendment cases.) The reason that this is important is a big fat tactical fact. Defeat is a process that takes place in the mind of the enemy. It is well known to military types that it is possible for the weaker force to overcome the stronger force if the stronger force can be convinced that it has lost. People are rapidly becoming the stronger force in conflicts with governments because of technology, but governments are trying to use intimidation where they lack the capabilities. They are trying to psych us (and particularly the more credulous) out. We can fight this weapon by constant hammering at the fact of the government's weakness and its failure to intimidate us. Since most of what we do on the nets is speech and since speech enjoys a great deal of protection in the US, it is important to hit the opposition hard in speech cases where we have a strong hand. I certainly don't advocate abuse of prosecutors in other cases (taxes and drugs) where conviction is likely. But in pure speech cases, we should really heap on the derision. I happen to think that the prosecution of the award-winning Phil Zimmermann is one of those kinds of cases. Another similar case surfaced in Connecticut. The "Greenwich 5" had conspired so that nonsense syllables in their high school yearbook photo captions spelled out "Kill all the [African Americans]." (Note the cypherpunk significance of code use.) There was a bit of controversy of course and the young scholars volunteered to attend a "Civil Rights Boot Camp" run by the now neo-conservative CORE. Some weeks later, local and state prosecutors announced that they would not prosecute the 5 under CT's civil rights laws because of "lack of evidence." Calls to The Butcher of Waco for federal prosecution followed but have as yet had no results. This is the sort of case in which I would advocate that the "object of prosecutorial interest" be as aggressive and abusive as possible. The reason the prosecutors declined to prosecute was not lack of evidence but lack of law violation. The prosecutors were too cowardly to state that the Greenwich 5's action was perfectly legal. Since the public servants won't, it is up to those who are attacked to do so. The benefits of cutting through the exon in a case like this is that prosecutors are less likely to proceed in similar cases in the future and the public is educated as to the true state of the law. It is recreational as well. DCF "Few generals have ever been defeated because they had too many soldiers under their command."