Re: New Laws in Oregon - "Land of the Legal betatest"
On Sat, 21 Jun 1997, Roy M. Silvernail wrote:
How do you propose to deal with such things as the Telecommunications Act of 1996 (which incidently included the CDA)? I can see a problem where one sentence or clause gets thrown out of a major bill (say a compromise budget, that someone screwed up one minor ammendment), and if you have that happen 3 times in 6 years, you've lost 90% of your senators! I'm not saying that your idea isn't without merit, just that it's got a few problems that strike me as somewhat major..
Please elaborate, as I can't see _any_ problem with eliminating 90% of the sitting legislature.
You've completely missed my point. This would be an on-going problem. Congress can only function with some idea of compromise in it. When you're passing budgets, especially the kind of budgets we have right now, they get big and complicated, I can't see that changing significantly, even with a massive turnover of members. But having no consistency in Congress at all, even for some "good" reps would be horrible. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Ryan Anderson - <Pug Majere> "Who knows, even the horse might sing" Wayne State University - CULMA "May you live in interesting times.." randerso@ece.eng.wayne.edu Ohio = VYI of the USA PGP Fingerprint - 7E 8E C6 54 96 AC D9 57 E4 F8 AE 9C 10 7E 78 C9 -----------------------------------------------------------------------
Ryan Anderson <randerso@ece.eng.wayne.edu> writes:
On Sat, 21 Jun 1997, Roy M. Silvernail wrote:
Please elaborate, as I can't see _any_ problem with eliminating 90% of the sitting legislature.
You've completely missed my point. This would be an on-going problem. Congress can only function with some idea of compromise in it.
Then Congress should be eliminated. There is no excuse for the CDA rider and my (now ex-)representative who voted for that bill was voted into office on a campaign of ending politics-as-usual sorts of things like that. Bah! Good riddance to bad rubbish to the whole lot of them. Tim May is right. I don't wish compromise, I only wish to be left alone. Why is that so hard for people in Washington DC to understand? Right now I have two senators: Dianne "No problem giving government contract money illegally to my husband" Swinestein and Barbara "No money in my checking account? I guess I'll just have to write another one" Boxer and congressional representative Walter "I cannot think of any government program which should be eliminated" Capps. The American government is broken.
On 22 Jun 1997, Steven L Baur wrote:
You've completely missed my point. This would be an on-going problem. Congress can only function with some idea of compromise in it.
Then Congress should be eliminated. There is no excuse for the CDA rider and my (now ex-)representative who voted for that bill was voted into office on a campaign of ending politics-as-usual sorts of things like that.
Look at it this way: If you want some bill passed (some spending bill or such) it has to get out of the Senate. the senate can easily pull a filibuster with a minority of the Senate, and shutdown the government entirely. If you really eliminate a sense of compromise on issues, you're hamstringing the government. It's really one of the fundamental things that is required to make a constitutional republic such as we have work. Remember, the founding fathers went way way way out of their way to make sure that this was not simply a majority rules country. Rather, the best description I've heard of it is a "majority rules with minority rights" (filibuster, etc..)
Right now I have two senators: Dianne "No problem giving government contract money illegally to my husband" Swinestein and Barbara "No money in my checking account? I guess I'll just have to write another one" Boxer and congressional representative Walter "I cannot think of any government program which should be eliminated" Capps. The American government is broken.
You have a better method? Let's hear it. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Ryan Anderson - <Pug Majere> "Who knows, even the horse might sing" Wayne State University - CULMA "May you live in interesting times.." randerso@ece.eng.wayne.edu Ohio = VYI of the USA PGP Fingerprint - 7E 8E C6 54 96 AC D9 57 E4 F8 AE 9C 10 7E 78 C9 -----------------------------------------------------------------------
At 1:07 pm -0400 on 6/22/97, Tim May wrote on cypherpunks:
"Something _wonderful_ is about to happen."
"I have a solution."
--Tim "Channeling Bell" May
Speaking of the dead, or at least the departed... Has anybody local to Jim Bell's stir gone to visit our incarcerated, um, gaming enthusiast, lately, just to see if he needs anything? Oh. Besides *that* of course. :-). Is Bell *taking* visitors yet? Would anyone in Oregon *want* to go visit Bell, reprehensible opinions and all, if he was accepting visitors? The reason I ask is, given events of the past few days, it may be time to start standing up for our friends, no matter how unsavory their ideas. Slippery slopes, and all that. I'm beginning to think of this as the net.equivalent of neighborhood "policing", if you will, where the slightest infraction against freedom by the federal law "enforcement" "community" is met with the most determined (legal!) resistance possible. Maybe something like Helsinki Watch, or, god forbid, Amnesty International. Arresting Jim Bell and holding him with what seems to be an unreasonable bail (that is, he can't afford to pay it) by a small army of nomex-hooded kluxer-equivalents is the police-state version of drinking on a streetcorner. "Patting down" the officials responsible, legally and politically, might yield the functional equivalent of a concealed weapons violation. That, in turn, would tell people who are wont to surround people's houses with black nomex ninja-wannabes to think twice about ordering such shenanigans in the future. Tim was talking earlier here about how this kind of accountability should have been held, more stringently, for the people who burned children in Waco, and who shot them at Ruby Ridge. Maybe it's time to hold people who commit capital crimes on the state's behalf to understand that the legal sword cuts both ways. If so, I think the best way to start this is to do it in manageable increments, and ratchet up the pressure from there. To have zero tolerence for even the smallest offenses, starting with the jailing of Mr. Bell. That's because Bell is, however rediculous the offense or his behavior the first cypherpunk political prisoner. He's ours, folks, like it or not. It's time we faced it, and dealt with the problem accordingly. To my mind, turnabout is in fact fair play. If you start busting the constitutional public drinkers, like the interagency Boy's State delegation who hauled Jim off, maybe the rest of the erst-fascists out there in Uncle's employ will keep their nomex pyjamas in the closet, only taking their costumes out for the occasional midnight constitution-burning ceremony, instead of coming next for someone with more substantial freedoms to defend. And, frankly, if rejectionism is called for, now or later, we will know that much sooner based on how well efforts like springing our canary in that Oregon coal mine fares... Admittedly, this is a distraction from the most important thing, which is writing code, but I bet that there are in fact cypherpunks-who-don't-code in Bell's neighborhood, and not necessarily even Friends of Jim, who would be happy to personally go see how Bell is doing and come back and tell us what happened. Think of it as part of the feedback loop for net.freedom. A trip into the coal mine with a canary cage. Yeah, I know. It's me making work for someone else. Nonetheless: Anyone out there want to do this? Cheers, Bob Hettinga ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah@shipwright.com), Philodox e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' The e$ Home Page: http://www.shipwright.com/
Has anybody local to Jim Bell's stir gone to visit our incarcerated, um, gaming enthusiast, lately, just to see if he needs anything? Oh. Besides *that* of course. :-).
I had thought that Jims court appearance was to be sometime about a week ago, what was he actually charged with? Has he appeared in court yet?
That's because Bell is, however rediculous the offense or his behavior the first cypherpunk political prisoner. He's ours, folks, like it or not. It's time we faced it, and dealt with the problem accordingly.
Indeed, Jim is without doubt under arrest not on whatever cooked-up charges they are holding him on, but because of AP and his "loon" type possesion of carbon fibers etc. Jim certainly deserves our support, who next otherwise? You?
Admittedly, this is a distraction from the most important thing, which is writing code, but I bet that there are in fact cypherpunks-who-don't-code in Bell's neighborhood, and not necessarily even Friends of Jim, who would be happy to personally go see how Bell is doing and come back and tell us what happened. Think of it as part of the feedback loop for net.freedom. A trip into the coal mine with a canary cage.
Not enough cypherpunks ever get round to writing significant code, myself included. I have lost count of the number of times I have sat down at a workstation overnight, got some way into starting a project, then just given up on it. I hope someone does go and see Jim, at the very least it would be a pleasant gesture and give Jim the message that the cypherpunks haven`t forgotten about him. Sure, It`s easy for me to talk, I can`t go and see him, I`m hardly in his neighbourhood, but if you shrug your shoulders and ignore his position it could be you next. 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"
Frankly, Tim, I expected a whole lot more intelligence, and less vehemence (well, maybe I didn't expect less vehemence :-)) in all this, and the following is a perfect case in point. At 1:11 pm -0500 on 11/19/97, Tim May cites the exception which proves the rule in a feeble attempt at historical revisionism:
At 11:38 AM -0700 6/22/97, Robert Hettinga wrote:
The reason I ask is, given events of the past few days, it may be time to start standing up for our friends, no matter how unsavory their ideas. ... Tim was talking earlier here about how this kind of accountability should have been held, more stringently, for the people who burned children in Waco, and who shot them at Ruby Ridge. Maybe it's time to hold people who commit capital crimes on the state's behalf to understand that the legal sword cuts both ways. If so, I think the best way to start this is to do it in manageable increments, and ratchet up the pressure from there. To have zero tolerence for even the smallest offenses, starting with the jailing of Mr. Bell.
Wow, Tim. You're trying to cite this as some kind of *counter*example? It's like you didn't even *read* the above in your following comments. You did, didn't you? Are you deliberately making this *easy* or something? Oh, well, here's my answer, anyway. :-). Which is: Fine. All of the above makes sense to me. Still. The people who committed murder at Waco and Ruby Ridge *have* committed a capital crime. It just hasn't been proven in a court of law. Yet. I'm saying, above, and again here, that if they break the law (notice what I said up there about the *legal* sword cutting both ways) it's time to put them in jail. That's still completely doable, even in the cases of the people from Waco and Ruby Ridge who have gotten off so far. It'll just take longer because our nation-state is in the hands of freedom-hating liberals instead of, say, libertarians or somebody like them. People still win these kinds of legal fights decades later, because they're right, and because, in the end, the truth usually wins. Reality is not optional. All it takes is determination. And maybe some money. I'm also saying, above, that it's time to start fighting back, (legally, if you notice :-)) when the government comes to harrass and jail people just because they're talking about using cryptography, and, it seemed to me that Bell's case was as good a time as any to start doing it. In other words, "Bell's in jail. Fine. People should do what they can to get Bell out of jail. Even if we don't like Bell." Frankly, what we've done, myself included, hasn't been good enough, if anyone around here crying 'apostasy' has probably noticed. Bell has sat in jail, without bail (or anyone to bail him out, for that matter) the entire time, and, bless his loony heart, he's probably "ratted out" half the internet by now, and whether they believe him or not remains to be seen. That sucks. It shouldn't have happend. To the extent that anyone doesn't help, or at least doesn't get the truth out, they're just as responsible for Bell sitting in jail as anyone else is. Yeah, I know. Collectivist nonsense. Sue me. :-). More to the point, it's still stupid, as Tim insists on doing, to try to provoke a violent confrontation, or by threatening federal judges, or, if no one pays attention to him then, whatever else he can think up. Frankly, that's the kind of stuff that put Bell himself in jail. I suppose learning would have occured out there in Corrolitos, but, apparently, it hasn't. Heck, it's also becoming apparent, from Tim's archival scholarship, that *reading* doesn't occur in Corrolitos, either. Spend some more time on the john, or something, Tim. Anyway, there are lots of better ways to fill the jails, and it seems to me that most cypherpunks I've met aren't the "fill the jails" type, anyway.
To paraphrase Hettinga himself, "I'm _telling!"
In a word, from Hettinga himself, "Bullshit." Here's Tim again, saying that I'm in cahoots with Billarybub hirself. No, Tim. I'm not a tory, or a snitch, or whatever. Nor, as you paranoiacly insinuate later on, have I gotten The Letter, The Briefing, or The Fucking-Anything-Else, either. You have seen here on cypherpunks all I have said to anybody on the entire issue. Frankly, it's the only place where it matters to say it, because *here's* where you're making such a doomsaying, sabrerattling fool of yourself.
It appears hear that Bob is not only posting "off subject, non-coding" stuff, but that he appears to be calling for taking action against the officials and judges in the Bell case.
Right, Tim. Officials. Not Judges. And *legal* action, not 'executive' action, as you and Dalton Trumbo like to put it. If some dolt at the IRS or any other member of the alphabet soup "taskforce" that hauled Bell away that morning actually broke the law, then they should be punished. And they probably didn't break the law, just "aggressively enforced" it, which probably won't land them in jail. Which, also, sounds vaguely like the scenario that would probably happen to you yourself, if you keep rattling their cage like Bell did. Finally, if I talked about any 'action' at all above it was to get Bell out of jail, which, Tim, I didn't see *you* doing anything about, either.
Yeah, I know. It's me making work for someone else. Nonetheless: Anyone out there want to do this?
"Will no one rid me of that judge?"?
Actually, what happened after that, in no particular order, and if you remember at all (maybe you should read the archives, too, Tim :-)), is that John Young started getting court documents the case and publishing them. I asked here if anyone wanted to go visit Bell in jail, in exchange for free admission to FC98, and Blanc volunteered to put together a group to go. Only, by that time, Bell wasn't taking any visitors, was being moved, and, now, apparently, has refused mail. Blanc, and John, and Greg Broiles, and I, and others, have been talking about the details of all this offline. I volunteered last week to go try to raise money to pay for the cost of documents, etc., and John said that the cost isn't that much, so far. And, of course, Blanc still gets in free at FC98. :-). Frankly, it's a shame that it wasn't possible to get Bell some legal representation, because, clearly, he needed it, as anyone here would probably agree by now. Doesn't matter if you disagree with Bell, or with using lawyers for that matter. :-). If Bell had been able to stay out of the clutches of the jailers (and social workers :-)), he probably wouldn't be as messed up as he probably is by now, and, "Thanksgiving cypherpunk massacre" or no, he might now be turning in anyone he can think of to get out. Being stuck with a bunch of social workers and psychiatrists may do that to a body... Being prepared to contribute for lawyers for other people, is, by the way, what people should now be thinking about, in case some other person, even another indigent loon like Bell, gets hauled in. Think about it as legal insurance? Yeah, I know. Collectivist nonsense. It's far better to hole up on a hillside and pump a few more hundred rounds through your Glock instead, right? Anything but figuring out how to get code written, anyway :-).
Physician, heal thyself.
Take a physic yourself, Tim. Maybe it'll improve your ability to read, if not your disposition. :-). One more thing, to everyone else. It sucks that we have to mess around with lawyers at all. The solution is code, not lawyers. Right? I mean, maybe it makes more sense to just cut people like Bell off and let them flap in the breeze. Triage. Evolution in action. "They aren't *really* cypherpunks" sounds like an awfully good answer, but, to follow on to what I said in the original posting, anyone who talks about cypherpunk ideas here, much less goes out and (apparently) tries to use them, is probably going to call themselves a cypherpunk, whether the rest of us on the list claim those people or not. Certainly, when these people find themselves in jail for one reason or another, especially if the prosecution goes on a crypto witch hunt, those folks going to "reach out" and claim us, whether we want them to or not, as Bell's case may still, in the faintest possibility, turn out to show us. And no, I still don't think the Alphabet Gang is decending on Corrolitos this Thursday, just because Tim says so. So, what I'm talking about here, maybe some kind of cryptography defense fund, is not offense, it's defense, self-defense, like some people keep a gun for self-defense. A defense of cryptography itself, if you will. Not only to prevent cryptographic abolition laws by going to court to overturn them, but, much more useful, to make sure that whatever cryptographic component of someone's otherwise criminal activities, (like Bell's Assassination Politics essay, versus his alleged physical attacks on IRS and law offices) is not used as a pretext to prevent strong cryptography from happening, much less to exacerbate that person's legal circumstances. Let me know, offline, if you're interested in this. Like any of my other crazy ideas, if enough people are interested, then it might be worth trying to do, and we can put together something more um, restrained than yet another broadside in this seemingly endless flamefest. Cheers, Bob Hettinga ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah@shipwright.com), Philodox e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' The e$ Home Page: http://www.shipwright.com/ Ask me about FC98 in Anguilla!: <http://www.fc98.ai/>
At 9:44 AM -0700 6/22/97, Ryan Anderson wrote:
You have a better method? Let's hear it.
Pick one or both of the below: "Something _wonderful_ is about to happen." "I have a solution." --Tim "Channeling Bell" May There's something wrong when I'm a felon under an increasing number of laws. Only one response to the key grabbers is warranted: "Death to Tyrants!" ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay@got.net 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."
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- In <v03102803afd30c03db18@[207.167.93.63]>, on 06/22/97 at 10:07 AM, Tim May <tcmay@got.net> said:
At 9:44 AM -0700 6/22/97, Ryan Anderson wrote:
You have a better method? Let's hear it.
Pick one or both of the below:
"Something _wonderful_ is about to happen."
Any truth to the rumor that a convoy of Rider trucks were seen Southbound on I25? - -- - --------------------------------------------------------------- William H. Geiger III http://www.amaranth.com/~whgiii Geiger Consulting Cooking With Warp 4.0 Author of E-Secure - PGP Front End for MR/2 Ice PGP & MR/2 the only way for secure e-mail. OS/2 PGP 2.6.3a at: http://www.amaranth.com/~whgiii/pgpmr2.html - --------------------------------------------------------------- -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.3a Charset: cp850 Comment: Registered_User_E-Secure_v1.1b1_ES000000 iQCVAwUBM61gEI9Co1n+aLhhAQH2MwP+IiCLNJrTRyehpzwPtDHWCTRnKHPH5BIQ Qrwcj/xRGuBKxPja4whihwtPYNfvR+arJ3KQOiZ/NgSdDI4otW52TsDy+b2MyUJ0 VHeC4WS2kuGGWQBnlCK7aT/I13YZDdO4dCAVV9Urn8j+LSThkUnCdsKyWQdcOr8V 29P8Ru9X6Qo= =JiJT -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
At 11:38 AM -0700 6/22/97, Robert Hettinga wrote:
The reason I ask is, given events of the past few days, it may be time to start standing up for our friends, no matter how unsavory their ideas. ... Tim was talking earlier here about how this kind of accountability should have been held, more stringently, for the people who burned children in Waco, and who shot them at Ruby Ridge. Maybe it's time to hold people who commit capital crimes on the state's behalf to understand that the legal sword cuts both ways. If so, I think the best way to start this is to do it in manageable increments, and ratchet up the pressure from there. To have zero tolerence for even the smallest offenses, starting with the jailing of Mr. Bell.
To paraphrase Hettinga himself, "I'm _telling!" It appears hear that Bob is not only posting "off subject, non-coding" stuff, but that he appears to be calling for taking action against the officials and judges in the Bell case. My, my, my.
Yeah, I know. It's me making work for someone else. Nonetheless: Anyone out there want to do this?
"Will no one rid me of that judge?"? Physician, heal thyself. --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: 2^2,976,221 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."
participants (6)
-
Paul Bradley -
Robert Hettinga -
Ryan Anderson -
Steven L Baur -
Tim May -
William H. Geiger III