Tim's Tips on Avoiding Prosecution

[David Honig]

At 10:41 AM 8/31/01 -0700, Tim May wrote:
>5. At physical Cypherpunks meetings, by all means talk about politics, 
>uses of technology, even "anarchic" things. But avoid being drawn into 
>debates about what to do to specific politicians, judges, etc.. 
>(Attendees at Bay Area meetings will know that for 9 years now we have 
>had occasional heated discussions of these things, but we have avoided 
>the kind of "people's tribunal" crap that helped get Bell into trouble.)

Maybe *that's* the reason for holding meatings at the SFPD.
To keep everyone from naming future corpses.

>However, a leader of Aryan Nation, for example, calling for his 
>followers to kill Jews might cross the line ("incitement"). Their have 
>been a few civil actions where the organization or its leaders were held 
>liable for damages caused by followers who were incited to _specific_ 
>actions.

So kill David Berg might be incitement?  Hmm, he was a public figure.
But  "kill all Jews" could easily be justified on religious grounds -fatwas
are protected speech.

>(An interesting question is whether any of the more vocal Cypherpunks 
>could be held liable, civilly or criminally, for actions by "followers." 

The ability of a persecutor [sic] to conjure up a conspiracy
(complete with hip name) could be most interesting.

>I doubt it, given the situation. And the fact that there are no formal 
>leaders, no structure, no real organization, helps. 


"While acknowledging himself an Anarchist, he does not state to what branch
of the organization he belongs" ---Discussing Leon Czolgosz' shooting of
President William McKinley 


>After about 10 minutes of staring me down, they told me to walk to the 
>closest point that was off campus and not to return. I asked about my 
>car. "If you are seen on campus, you will be arrested. You can get your 
>car tomorrow." (Great, since I lived 60 miles away.)

A "fuck you" would have been appropriate, but not in your
rational self-interest.

>By the way, the SS also demanded that I give them my name and show them 
>my driver's license. I refused, 

Nice.

so at least they never got my name 
>entered into the Master Data Bank of Presidential Threateners.

Yeah right :-)

> I brought along my COMSEC (later, Starian) 3DES phone unit, 
>to illustrate to the class some hardware.

Did you plan to call someone while running some kind of sniffer,
or could the box have been empty?  :-)  The problem of the
modern industrial photographer: all chips look the same.

>She said that students and faculty had all been dealing 
>with the effects of Chelsea's arrival as a student and that the law 
>school would be quite happy to handle my case if the SS or Stanford 
>Sheriff's Dept. nabbed me.

Sweet.