Dropping out of the USA

[Tim May]

At 2:37 AM +0200 7/11/01, Anonymous wrote:
>Tim May wrote:
>>  I will say that there is no country out there that seems to be
>>  beyond the reach of U.S. law enforcement, pace the points we discuss
>>  so often about drug warriors, freezing of accounts, extradition,
>>  etc.  Even Yugoslavia has just bowed to U.S. financing pressures
>>  (sending Milosevic to the Hague for a show trial).
>
>The cost is higher, though, especially the cost of figuring out what
>you are doing.  You are mostly out from under the footprint.  For
>example, it's much more difficult for the Feds to illegally tap your
>phone in, say, Russia.  Also, it will be harder for them to do their
>thing without tipping you off.

This begs the question: _which_ "Feds"? While it may be harder for 
America's Feds to tap phones in Russia (but don't count on this being 
true for long), the successors to the KGB and GRU are very active. 
Russia even has draconian laws against crypto use which America was 
unable to pass.

In any case, it's absurd to think one would move to Russia to escape 
the problems of the U.S.

>
>The Feds have to use a certain amount of discretion when operating in
>other countries.  When Ames was meeting his Russian handlers in
>Colombia, the FBI tried to catch him at it, but blew it because they
>were there illegally and had to exercise caution.

Ames and Hanssen were textbook cases in "old school" thinking. They 
literally used the old kind of dead drops: messages left in Coke cans 
left at the base of oak trees in parks, chalk marks on mailboxes. 
Jeesh.


>While it's too bad that there isn't a single Libertarian government
>out there, other countries may still have uses.  Two risky investments
>is a better deal than one big investment with the same risk.

Whatever.


--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