Pleading the 5th

[Tim May]

At 3:19 PM -0700 4/4/01, David Honig wrote:
>At 10:29 PM 4/4/01 +0200, Anonymous wrote:

...

>  >If asked the question "have you ever communicated with [third party]",
>>could one plead the fifth if that communication was made through a
>>pseudonym, and tying that pseudonym to oneself could potentially be
>>incriminating?
>
>Indeed the 5th is up to you to decide ---after all, only you know what
>you've done.  You can only be forced to talk to a GJ if given immunity for
>anything you say,
>by arrangement beforehand; I think this came up during Monicagate.  JY
>or DM could easily take the 5th if they so chose. 
>
>How would anyone (including themselves or their council) prove to them that
>any answer associating them with JB would not be incriminating in the next
>wave?

Inasmuch as I think the Feds are trying to put together a RICO case 
for Cypherpunks being some kind of "continuing criminal conspiracy," 
it would seem that _any_ testimony before a GJ, whether about past 
membership, current membership, contacts with others, authorship of 
articles, etc. could constitute "self incrimination" for the 
impending Federal case.

"Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of the notorious and 
infamous organization known as "the Cypherpunks"?"

Unless given use immunity (as I understand the legal jargon, given 
that IANAL), anything admitted to is fodder for the Main Case, yet to 
come.

--Tim May


-- 
Timothy C. May         tcmay at 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