Jim Bell's fiber-optic patent application.

[CryptoFreak]

On 09/22/2013 05:25 PM, Jim Bell wrote:
> *From:* CryptoFreak <cryptofreak at cpunk.us>
> 
> On 09/21/2013 06:46 PM, Jim Bell wrote:
>> *From:* CryptoFreak <cryptofreak at cpunk.us <mailto:cryptofreak at cpunk.us>>
>>
>>>>I completely support the idea of disloyalty oaths. The only problem I
>>>>see is that they simply wouldn't work. What we'd see is the government
>>>>putting increased threat of criminal prosecution on the corporate chain
>>>>and not enough corporate officers willing to risk going to jail in order
>>>>to do the right thing. Marissa Mayer from Yahoo said as much in her
>>>>Techcrunch interview last week.
>>
>>> Consider:  Let's suppose there's a person in the Justice Department,
>>> I'll call him "Ed Justice" (in honor of Ed Snowden) with access to that
>>> order, who decides to leak a copy of the court order to Cryptome,
>>> Wikileaks, etc, a couple of days after it is served on the target media
>>> corporation.  (He may do so for reasons of malice, or perhaps
>>> benevolence:  He WANTS the order to leak, because he doesn't agree with
>>> the practice.)  The usual 9-by-12 brown envelope with no return
>>> address, only stamps, careful to avoid fingerprints, etc.  The
>>> leak-publisher(s) publishes the order.  How does the government prove
>>> that the lead was done by the target media corporation, and not by
>> >somebody else?  A criminal prosecution requires evidence, and none will
>> >exist.
>> >In addition, there is an excellent argument that any order of secrecy is
>> >an obvious violation of the First Amendment to the US Constitution.  I
>>> don't recall reading any justification for such orders in any legal
>>> cases, but I think that this would be on flimsy legal ground.
> 
>>Perhaps I'm being overly pessimistic but I can't imagine this kind of
>>thing happening on a routine basis. If anything, it looks like the
>>government is closing ranks and increasing the indoctrination of their
>>employees. I fear that we're going to see fewer and fewer people with
>>the courage of Edward Snowden as we move forward.
>>...CryptoFreak
> 
> I guess you did not get my point.  I'm not depending on, or even
> hoping,  that such a person as "Ed Justice" would exist.  (Although it
> would certainly be useful.)  Rather, I am observing that the government
> would not likely be able to prove that "Ed Justice" DOESN'T exist.  Any
> prosecution of somebody based on the charge that he leaked a court order
> would require that there be proof that the person charged leaked the
> document in question.  The defense would argue, 'The prosecution hasn't
> excluded the possibility that the actual leak was secretly accomplished
> by a government employee for his own reasons.  We can see that people
> like Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden do indeed exist.   How do we
> know that the document in question wasn't leaked by yet another person?"

You're right, I did miss the point of your email. I get it now. Thanks
for the clarification!

Cf