The Privacy/Untraceability Sweet Spot

[David Honig]

On Thursday, August 30, 2001, at 12:42 PM, mmotyka at lsil.com wrote:
>> Can that twisted reasoning be applied to advocating
>> the use of code to obsolete the government and then actually creating
>> code? 

'Twisted reasoning' could lead to anything, so its not too useful
to use it as a constraint.  A stray bayonet-mount could
turn your code into assault software...

That being said: 

There are *no* tools which are useful *only* for powering down
government.  

File sharing tools are useful; that they also erode copyright is
collateral damage.  Anonymous systems are useful.
That you can build AP systems, or worse, spam with them, is collateral
damage.  
'Damage' of course implies a value system where copyright is good and AP is
bad.  
Side-effect is a more neutral term.  



At 12:49 PM 8/30/01 -0700, Tim May wrote:

>Assuming your hypo, there is little protection in the "Alice talks, Bob 
>codes" solution, if Alice and Bob associate. For a conspiracy charge, 
>the fact that some talk and some build things is not important.

Besides, code *is* speech.  Though some men who wear black dresses
during office hours have trouble digesting that.