Bell Case Subpoena
Today at 4:30 PM two Treasury agents, Tom Jack and Matthew Mc Whirr, served me a Subpoena to Testify Before Grand Jury, in US District Court of Western Washington, Seattle, WA, on January 25, 2001, 9:00 AM. Robb London, AUSA, is the applicant. The agents asked no questions except to verify my identity. The principal agent, Mr. Jack, referred me to Special Agent Jeff Gordon for questions if I had any, and presented a note with Jeff's name, title, Treasury office, and phone number. Mr. Jack said they knew nothing about the case and were only serving the subpoena. I asked for Mr. McWhirr's name, borrowed his pen to jot both names -- neither had cards, only badges to show. Mr. Jack said they were with Treasury Inspector General for Tax Adminstration (TIGTA), as is Jeff. The date of the subpoena is December 27, 2000, and was faxed to New York at 8:36 AM today. The subpoena states in bold caps "We request that you do not disclose the existence of this subpoena, because such a disclosure may make it more difficult to conduct the investigation." The subpoena is one page, with two pages of attachments, one titled "Information for Grand Jury Witnesses," the other a description of arrangements for reimbursement of expenses. The subpoena orders: You are commanded to appear and testify before the Grand Jury at place, date and time (as given above). And, You are also commanded to bring with you the following document(s) or object(s): Please provide any and all documents, papers, letters, computer disks, photographs, notes, objects, information, or other items in your possession or under your control, including electronically stored or computer records, which: 1. Name, mention, describe, discuss, involve or relate to James Dalton Bell, a/k/a Jim Bell, or 2. Were previously possessed, owned, created, sent by, transported, or oftherwise affiliated with James Dalton Bell, a/k/a Jim Bell, or 3. Contain the names, addresses, license plate numbers, or any other identifying information involving any Government employees. This subpoena shall remain in effect until you are granted leave to depart by the court or by an officer acting on behalf of the court. ----- We'll do a full transcription of the whole shebang to post on Cryptome tonight. Nothing in the subpoena indicates that it is restricted to the current interstate stalking charges against Jim. Those charges are not mentioned. Anybody else who got one of these, or other subpoenas, and wants to share send it over. Our fax: 212-787-6102. Delete any info you don't want to be public.
On Monday 08 January 2001 16:09, John Young wrote:
You are also commanded to bring with you the following document(s) or object(s):
Please provide any and all documents, papers, letters, computer disks, photographs, notes, objects, information, or other items in your possession or under your control, including electronically stored or computer records, which:
1. Name, mention, describe, discuss, involve or relate to James Dalton Bell, a/k/a Jim Bell, or
2. Were previously possessed, owned, created, sent by, transported, or oftherwise affiliated with James Dalton Bell, a/k/a Jim Bell, or
How would you know if it was sent by him unless it had a digital signature that you are willing to testify in court was know to belong to him and had not been comprimised? jim -- Sometimes it is said that man can not be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the forms of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question. -- Thomas Jefferson, 1st Inaugural
----- Original Message ----- From: "John Young" <jya@pipeline.com>
Please provide any and all documents, papers, letters, computer disks, photographs, notes, objects, information, or other items in your possession or under your control, including electronically stored or computer records, which: 3. Contain the names, addresses, license plate numbers, or any other identifying information involving any Government employees.
Will they pay any transportation (airline) expenses before the appearance? If so, I have a large number of old newspapers and phone-books to give you.
Jim burnes wrote:
How would you know if it was sent by him unless it had a digital signature that you are willing to testify in court was know to belong to him and had not been comprimised?
Right. Nor could I know that "Jim Bell" who's was posting to cpunks is Jim Bell or a Jim Bell being run by London/Gordon et cie. Remember that a parallel grand jury investigation was announced during CJ's trial to spook those who might consider tampering with blind justice. Then nothing more was heard of that Robb shot, as far as I know. The purpose of the alleged grand jury of my subpoena is a mystery, but it's surely ham sandwich bait of some kind. An invitation to perjure or self-incriminate. Jim Bell is, and has been, fed bait since he was released. Whether he was that before his first bust, that's a reasonable question. Bell's shit certainly bred to CJ's shafting. WWA pack believe they've got a winning campaign to keep on trucking, using secret agents of persuasion.
We've completed transcription of the subpoena and attachments: http://cryptome.org/jdb-subpoena.htm The Information for Grand Jury Witnesses says, "The witness is required to answer all questions asked, except to the extent that a truthful answer to a question would tend to incriminate the witness. A knowingly false answer to any question could be the basis for a prosecution of the witness for perjury. Anything a Grand Jury witness says which tends to incriminate him may be used against him by the Grand Jury, or later used against him in Court." That's good 5A advice to protect against coercion, intimidation, squealing, fishing, entrapment, blindsiding, ham sandwiching, and believing you're saving your ass by disbelieving what the witness Information threatens: "The mere fact that this information accompanies your subpoena should not be taken as any indication or suggestion that you are under investigation or are likely to be charged with a crime."
On Monday 08 January 2001 16:09, John Young wrote:
You are also commanded to bring with you the following document(s) or object(s):
Please provide any and all documents, papers, letters, computer disks, photographs, notes, objects, information, or other items in your possession or under your control, including electronically stored or computer records, which:
1. Name, mention, describe, discuss, involve or relate to James Dalton Bell, a/k/a Jim Bell, or
2. Were previously possessed, owned, created, sent by, transported, or oftherwise affiliated with James Dalton Bell, a/k/a Jim Bell, or
How would you know if it was sent by him unless it had a digital signature that you are willing to testify in court was know to belong to him and had not been comprimised?
I'd think there'd be serious problems with most of the evidence in this case being hearsay, except stuff specifically posted by Jim Bell. Thanks! Bill Bill Stewart, bill.stewart@pobox.com PGP Fingerprint D454 E202 CBC8 40BF 3C85 B884 0ABE 4639
At 12:33 PM -0800 1/9/01, Bill Stewart wrote:
On Monday 08 January 2001 16:09, John Young wrote:
You are also commanded to bring with you the following document(s) or object(s):
Please provide any and all documents, papers, letters, computer disks, photographs, notes, objects, information, or other items in your possession or under your control, including electronically stored or computer records, which:
1. Name, mention, describe, discuss, involve or relate to James Dalton Bell, a/k/a Jim Bell, or
2. Were previously possessed, owned, created, sent by, transported, or oftherwise affiliated with James Dalton Bell, a/k/a Jim Bell, or
How would you know if it was sent by him unless it had a digital signature that you are willing to testify in court was know to belong to him and had not been comprimised?
I'd think there'd be serious problems with most of the evidence in this case being hearsay, except stuff specifically posted by Jim Bell.
ven a "From: Jim Bell" doesn't prove anything. Besides knowing this from first principles (about spoofing, signatures, etc.), we have seen this demonstrated on this very list. Recall that various posters were claiming to be "Toto" during the unfolding of that situation. Recall that Detweiler (presumably) used to issue posts with my name attached, with Nick Szabo's name attached, with Eric Hughes' name attached, etc. These points were never tested in the court cases of Bell or Parker. John Young could quite easily show up in Seattle with _none_ of the items the subpoena calls for. If questioned, he could say he had no means of knowing if the articles, posts, etc. were in fact from Bell or were generated by Infowar cointelpro operatives in law enforcement or even by Detweiler or May or whomever. Also, even if he chooses to comply and grep through his mail archives for "any and all documents...mention...discuss....Jim Bell," this would presumably turn up many hundreds of such documents. And the provenance will be unknown (an ordinary mail spool, or Eudora folder, or Outlook Express whatever, etc., being editable and alterable). John Young (or anyone else) could have edited his mail spool to put words into "Bell"'s alleged mail. I expect this upcoming trial will not be the case which hinges on these kinds of issues, but some court will someday have to contend with this utter malleability of received mail files. Unlike paper letters which can be forensically analyzed, e-mail is nearly meaningless. --Tim May -- Timothy C. May tcmay@got.net Corralitos, California Political: Co-founder Cypherpunks/crypto anarchy/Cyphernomicon Technical: physics/soft errors/Smalltalk/Squeak/agents/games/Go Personal: b.1951/UCSB/Intel '74-'86/retired/investor/motorcycles/guns
On Tue, Jan 09, 2001 at 12:33:11PM -0800, Bill Stewart wrote:
I'd think there'd be serious problems with most of the evidence in this case being hearsay, except stuff specifically posted by Jim Bell.
Remember that the subpoena delivered to JYA is for a grand jury appearance - not trial testimony (yet). Grand juries are supposed to protect the accused (in that they're supposed to be an early review of prosecution evidence) but have been twisted into investigatory tools where the production of secret testimony in an unstructured environment (traditional rules like the rule against hearsay evidence don't apply to grand jury proceedings) turn out to be very valuable to the persec, er, prosecution. If witness testimony suggests that other evidence of crimes may be available - say, maybe Witness X describes an email received from Person A, or produces a copy of that email - then investigators can go forth and seek corroborative evidence to support (or replace) Witness X's testimony at trial, perhaps with search warrants if they believe the holders of that evidence are not inclined to cooperate with subpoenas. And, as Bill alludes above, the rule against hearsay evidence does not apply to statements purportedly made by the opposing party (e.g., the defendant, in a criminal case), so messages allegedly from Jim Bell are likely to be admitted into evidence - Jim and/or his attorney will have an opportunity to argue that they should not be considered reliable evidence, or that if reliable they do not constitute criminal acts or elements of crime(s) charged. The mere possibility that evidence might be fabricated or altered will not keep it out of court, but only provide the basis for an argument that it should not be trusted. The jury or judge is free to accept or ignore that argument as their common sense or politics dictate. The "you can't trust email headers because they might be forged" argument didn't go far in CJ's trial, and they're not likely to fare much better elsewhere. The criminal trial system is perfectly comfortable with evidence whose theoretical (or actual) perfection and purity are less than ideal. -- Greg Broiles gbroiles@netbox.com PO Box 897 Oakland CA 94604
On Tue, Jan 09, 2001 at 04:55:41PM -0800, Greg Broiles wrote:
... messages allegedly from Jim Bell are likely to be admitted into evidence - Jim and/or his attorney will have an opportunity to argue that they should not be considered reliable evidence, or that if reliable they do not constitute criminal acts or elements of crime(s) charged. The mere possibility that evidence might be fabricated or altered will not keep it out of court, but only provide the basis for an argument that it should not be trusted. The jury or judge is free to accept or ignore that argument as their common sense or politics dictate.
I'm not a lawyer, but my guess is that, unless there is a very compelling argument from expert witness which "proves" to the judge or jury that the emails in a particular case are forged, emails would be accepted in pretty much any (US) court. I beleive that's how written evidence is treated now, even though handwriting and signatures can be forged. If a handwriting expert is brought in and "proves" that there's a forgery, the evidence is thrown out or the judge or jury disregard it as appropriate. In this regard, security experts will be the handwriting experts of the future. (Greg, have there been any cases where email evidence has been shown in a court to be forged? Has this even been attempted, other than Bell's case?) -- Eric Murray Consulting Security Architect SecureDesign LLC http://www.securedesignllc.com PGP keyid:E03F65E5
On Tue, Jan 09, 2001 at 05:38:01PM -0800, Eric Murray wrote:
I'm not a lawyer, but my guess is that, unless there is a very compelling argument from expert witness which "proves" to the judge or jury that the emails in a particular case are forged, emails would be accepted in pretty much any (US) court. I beleive that's how written evidence is treated now, even though handwriting and signatures can be forged. If a handwriting expert is brought in and "proves" that there's a forgery, the evidence is thrown out or the judge or jury disregard it as appropriate.
I think this is right on. It's important to remember that evidence (especially scientific or technical evidence) is subject to a two-step vetting process - there's initial review by the judge, who must be convinced that the evidence is potentially reliable and relevant; and then the judge or jury must decide that they want to believe the evidence after it's been admitted. There's plenty of evidence which is both admissible (and admitted) yet ignored by juries.
(Greg, have there been any cases where email evidence has been shown in a court to be forged? Has this even been attempted, other than Bell's case?)
I don't have an appellate case or a cite at hand immediately - I do know that there was a case here in Silicon Valley where an ex-employee and ex-girlfriend of Larry Ellison (CEO of Oracle) falsified an email which purported to prove that she was the victim of sexual harassment at Oracle - she lost her lawsuit against Oracle and was subsequently convicted of perjury. (See 4 J. Tech Law & Policy 1 at para 31; <http://journal.law.ufl.edu/~techlaw/4/Dixon.html> or a Seattle Times article at <http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/news/local/html98/love_092798.html>). -- Greg Broiles gbroiles@netbox.com PO Box 897 Oakland CA 94604
On Tue, Jan 09, 2001 at 02:44:57PM -0800, Tim May wrote:
I expect this upcoming trial will not be the case which hinges on these kinds of issues, but some court will someday have to contend with this utter malleability of received mail files. Unlike paper letters which can be forensically analyzed, e-mail is nearly meaningless.
Yes and no. Courts have figured out long ago how to deal with malleable computer files, of which email is a special case. And notes allegedly taken during a telephone call or meeting (which were important during the MS antitrust trial) are equally malleable. What the prosecution here is interested in is chain of custody, did you receive this message, can you verify that Exhibit A is what you received from someone@somewhere.com, etc. with perjury as a deterrent. Then they can use phone records to show a defendant was online then via a dialup connection... It strikes me that this is a sort of link padding: If you're online all the time, those phone records will be virtually useless. -Declan
At 5:09 PM -0500 1/8/01, John Young wrote:
Today at 4:30 PM two Treasury agents, Tom Jack and Matthew Mc Whirr, served me a Subpoena to Testify Before Grand Jury, in US District Court of Western Washington, Seattle, WA, on January 25, 2001, 9:00 AM. Robb London, AUSA, is the applicant.
The subpoena states in bold caps "We request that you do not disclose the existence of this subpoena, because such a disclosure may make it more difficult to conduct the investigation." ... Please provide any and all documents, papers, letters, computer disks, photographs, notes, objects, information, or other items in your possession or under your control, including electronically stored or computer records, which:
1. Name, mention, describe, discuss, involve or relate to James Dalton Bell, a/k/a Jim Bell, or
By the way, John, thanks for the "heads up." I purged my archives of Jim Bell e-mail sent directly to me, though I left on my system the e-mail he copied the list on. (Yes, I purged the back-ups, too. A good reason not to back up e-mail to CD-Rs.) --Tim May -- Timothy C. May tcmay@got.net Corralitos, California Political: Co-founder Cypherpunks/crypto anarchy/Cyphernomicon Technical: physics/soft errors/Smalltalk/Squeak/agents/games/Go Personal: b.1951/UCSB/Intel '74-'86/retired/investor/motorcycles/guns
At 04:55 PM 1/9/01 -0800, Greg Broiles wrote:
On Tue, Jan 09, 2001 at 12:33:11PM -0800, Bill Stewart wrote:
I'd think there'd be serious problems with most of the evidence in this case being hearsay, except stuff specifically posted by Jim Bell.
Remember that the subpoena delivered to JYA is for a grand jury appearance - not trial testimony (yet).
Oh, right, good point.
The "you can't trust email headers because they might be forged" argument didn't go far in CJ's trial, and they're not likely to fare much better elsewhere. The criminal trial system is perfectly comfortable with evidence whose theoretical (or actual) perfection and purity are less than ideal.
But haven't there been people actively forging Bell's headers? I forget who was forging whom in the CJ mess. (And even that's not counting Detweiler.) Thanks! Bill Bill Stewart, bill.stewart@pobox.com PGP Fingerprint D454 E202 CBC8 40BF 3C85 B884 0ABE 4639
participants (8)
-
Bill Stewart -
Declan McCullagh -
Eric Murray -
Greg Broiles -
Jim Burnes -
John Young -
Me -
Tim May