Tim May wrote:

At 2:37 AM +0200 7/11/01, Anonymous wrote:

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Tim May wrote:

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I will say that there is no country out there that seems to be beyond the reach of U.S. law enforcement, pace the points we discuss so often about drug warriors, freezing of accounts, extradition, etc. Even Yugoslavia has just bowed to U.S. financing pressures (sending Milosevic to the Hague for a show trial).

The cost is higher, though, especially the cost of figuring out what you are doing. You are mostly out from under the footprint. For example, it's much more difficult for the Feds to illegally tap your phone in, say, Russia. Also, it will be harder for them to do their thing without tipping you off.

This begs the question: _which_ "Feds"? While it may be harder for America's Feds to tap phones in Russia (but don't count on this being true for long), the successors to the KGB and GRU are very active. Russia even has draconian laws against crypto use which America was unable to pass.

In any case, it's absurd to think one would move to Russia to escape the problems of the U.S.

Russia sucks. For one thing, it's damned cold. Still, if you are doing something which is annoying to the USG and not the Russians, Russia is a better deal. Maybe not the best deal. It's not the case that all world governments have perfectly synchronized their witch hunts.

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The Feds have to use a certain amount of discretion when operating in other countries. When Ames was meeting his Russian handlers in Colombia, the FBI tried to catch him at it, but blew it because they were there illegally and had to exercise caution.

Ames and Hanssen were textbook cases in "old school" thinking. They literally used the old kind of dead drops: messages left in Coke cans left at the base of oak trees in parks, chalk marks on mailboxes. Jeesh.

The point is that even in the most important case the FBI handled in a decade, they couldn't do a basic surveillance job in a friendly foreign country. Implication: the same applies to less important people. Sheesh. Harmon Seaver wrote:

How about Costa Rica? I met some people from there who said the government there was very cool, no problems. OTOH, anyplace you go that you're a foreigner, you always stand out. But Costa Rica has always attracted me, both politically and geographically, because the upland weather is quite cool, like the political climate.

No standing army, either. What's the tax system like? Can people shoot guns legally? Net connection? Will you visit soon?