USA PATRIOT Act Survives Amendment Attempt

Thomas Shaddack shaddack at ns.arachne.cz
Fri Jul 9 17:22:26 PDT 2004


On Fri, 9 Jul 2004, Steve Schear wrote:

> This may best be accomplished by placing the data offshore and empowering the
> db operators with some non-repudiatable right of disclosure (especially under
> duress of a warrant).

This may be impractical in some cases.

> Some months back I discussed a procedural methodology where patrons could find
> out if their records hand been accessed in a way that circumvented court
> orders.  I was told that it might work but that frustrated prosecutors might
> press charges of conspiracy before the fact to evade lawful orders that
> 'might' be issued, even if the defendant had no reasonable expectation that
> this might occur.

But we have a psychological mechanism here; many people tend to be "tough" 
when not under direct threat. Then they implement the mechanism. Then 
years flow by. Then the prosecutors come. But by then it is too late to 
cooperate. They are doomed (though that depends largely on the available 
lawyers), but it can save the ones they were protecting.

It seems that, by the prosecutor logic, just about any comsec improvement 
you implemented may be viewed as a conspiracy, including but not limited 
to secure email.

I am not happy to say this, but can we ever hope for designing any kind of 
secure infrastructure without some nodes having to win the martyr lottery?


....speaking about martyrs... I am just watching a TV document about cults. 
Maybe we could piggyback on religion and use some kinks within Christian 
doctrine, selected for having wide user base within Western civilization? 
Eg, finding a believable and theologically coherent explanation how 
operating a Darknet node helps undermining the reign of Satan (a voice 
suggests me that the Book of Prophecies, or how that horsemen thing is 
called, could contain enough of material to build on)? That could provide 
a decent amount of node ops using existing infrastructure of likely-minded 
religious organizations. Faith is a big motivation for undertaking risk, 
and while Westerners currently tend to be less radical than 
Middle-Easterners, this kind of mission is far from suicidal.

But one of the voices in my head just told me that shared MP3s would bring 
in more people with less effort...


> "The law is an ass."
> -- Charles Dickens

Maybe because most of it comes out of ass-holes?





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