Ray Dillinger writes:

I've composed a dozen responses, considered the subpeona and the trial that could result from posting each, and wiped them. There's your "chilling effect on political discussion" if you're interested. This one, I'm going to post, so I'm being very careful what I say.

If only there was some technology that would let you post, and say whatever you wanted... something that cypherpunks might have invented... something that would provide you a shield so that even unpopular speech can be presented with little fear of retribution. If only. Well, maybe someday.

The focus of the US intel community is shifting, at the current time, to "domestic terrorism". That makes political speech of the kind which has in past years been entirely normal on this list orders of magnitude more dangerous to the participants than it was at that time. Taking part in this discussion in a style "traditional" for this list could be very dangerous. Remember, one out of every fifty Americans is in jail, and if you think you're in the most radical two percent of the population, there are implications, aren't there?

According to http://www.msnbc.com/news/602062.asp: "Between 1990 and 2000, the rate of Americans who were imprisoned skyrocketed -- from 1 in every 218 Americans to 1 in every 142. That translated to over 1,500 additional inmates each week. Over 3 percent of the U.S. population was in the corrections system." Most of these are black, so if you're white you're not affected so much.

Now, I shan't be participating in the rest of this thread, I don't think. Instead, I shall spend my time writing code. Code which I do not intend to release in a form traceable back to me. I encourage those who can, to do the same.

And who is the one posting under his own name?