Tim's Tips on Avoiding Prosecution

[Tim May]

On Friday, August 31, 2001, at 06:14 PM, David Honig wrote:

> 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.

I certainly would never attend a Cypherpunks meeting held at a police 
training facility!

A bizarre development in the history of Cypherpunks, that's for sure.

>> 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.

Specificity matters. If someone with some ability to influence urges his 
followers to "Kill Jews," and some of them begin to, expect an 
"incitement" (and perhaps "conspiracy") charge to stick against the 
speaker. If someone mere opines that Jews should be killled, protected 
speech.


>
>> 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.

I just said very little. When they asked me for ID, I said nothing. When 
they asked me for my name, I said nothing. When they said they wanted to 
search my bag, I said "No."

>> 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.

Didn't happen, though. No arrest.

Also no return gigs at her class...for whatever reason. If I recall the 
years right, it was in '95 that I first spoke, then in '97 when the 
incident occurred. We've had no contact since. Maybe I wasn't the 
speaker she wanted, maybe she'd heard enough from me, maybe my run-in 
with the Securitat was enough for her.

(And Larry Lessig is now at Stanford, so maybe he's taken over teaching 
the cyberlaw class.)


--TIm May