That should have been Bernie-S, not -X. And Mitnick now runs a rather profitable security service and lecture series. About Jim Bell (he can speak for himself but I know best how to smell and tell a rat): The IRS secret agent leading Jim's chase, Agent Gordon, lurked on cypherpunks for a long time, gathering names and addresses to subpoena for Jim's grand jury probe and (first) trial. Several of us were subpoenad along with cpunks records from some (John Gilmore one of those). Some, like me, were summoned both for the grand jury and the trial held in Tacoma, WA. (Sidebar: youngster Declan McCullagh covered that and I urged him to report seditiously enough to be sent to jail to build his rep -- he politely refused to cellmate Jim.) Short story (full account in the archive) is that not many supported Jim all the way when the shit came down, indeed, brazenly ridiculed his adventure, presumably to cover their ass from Agent Gordon and co-lurkers always on duty hereabouts. Who secretly ratted Jim at the grand jury remains unknown but their behavior and sweat odor has been profiled by god and they will not be given authentic bitcoins, only fakes with their undercover UID embedded like Lamo. At 06:13 PM 11/16/2013, you wrote:

On Sat, Nov 16, 2013 at 8:36 AM, John Young wrote:

...

... At a HOPE panel on informants, several hackers disclosed those pressures to rat, some succumbed and were let off, Emmanuel Goldstein admitted it, some refused and were jailed, Bernie-X, Kevin Mitnick. All agreed it is far worse to go through than you think. Goldstein estimated 25% of hackers are rats.

Jim Bell's exhortations to deny all pleas a hard sell considering that one in four rolls over completely under pressure. :/

...

Barrett Brown is on the hot seat right now, being offering deals to rat, as customary, with three (!) trials postponed to maintain pressure. Shit, even his mom was used as a fed provocation to misbehave then as a persuasion club as were Sabu's nephew and niece.

it would be interesting to see a survey of the carrots and sticks used by federal prosecutors.

...

Anybody with a high profile is targeted, so beware publicity hounds crowing of derrying-do and urgings by high profilers who may or may not be in the grips of the feds, and if not, will soon be due to their publicity narcosis, and then used as clubs or head to jail for obstruction and recidivism or some other nut-squeezing -- even in jail they are offered deals to rat and sentence reduced.

good thing JYA stays under the radar!

Sorry to say Radar mag did a smear of us.

...

In or out jail the pressure to rat continues, as with Adrian Lamo. Ex-cons never know if an overture is an LE sting or a an honest request for advice, so they rat to be safe -- recall they are obliged -- forever -- to report overtures, just like ex-spies remain under the gun to rat for life. If you haven't been there don't imagine you know what it's like.

what do you mean by "obliged -- forever -- to report overtures"? i would be very interested to know if there are clauses compelling disclosure in these agreements for unrelated activities. is this "soft" pressure, or legally binding?

Notice upon release from prison that ex-cons are expected to be on call. Panoptic assured. Moreso for ex-spies.

...

Don't imagine this list and others like it, chats, OTRs, TOR, are not being spied for easy targets.

this opportunistic spying even has a code name: EPICFAIL

Also Open Source.