Epilogue: U.S. v. Jim Bell trial in federal court in Tacoma
Four articles are excerpted below: Wired News on government's motion to seal public court records Sierra Times: "IRS Prosecutes Outspoken Dissident" About.com: "Jim Bell's show trial" Cluebot.com on how government surveillance killed the cypherpunks list -Declan *** http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,43064,00.html The U.S. government wants to seal public court records in a trial of an Internet essayist for privacy reasons. Assistant U.S. Attorney Robb London this week asked a federal judge to seal all documents -- including exhibits and transcripts -- that might include personal information and home addresses about people who testified in the trial of Jim Bell. A jury found Bell guilty of two counts of interstate stalking. London said: "We are concerned that information in these exhibits not be published... (We) don't need to have that information posted on the Internet." While the charges are crucial to understanding the case against Bell, the government feels uneasy about the home addresses of federal agents being easily accessible to the public. London cited the addresses of agents dozens of times in open court, and displayed digital photographs of the homes Bell visited. U.S. District Judge Jack Tanner thought about London's request for a moment, then denied it. "I don't think I have the authority to do that," Tanner said. [The meaning was changed slightly in editing. The fourth paragraph should be "addresses of people Bell *believed* to be federal agents but were not. One was, for instance, a real estate agent. --DBM] *** http://www.sierratimes.com/archive/files/apr/13/arst041301.htm IRS Prosecutes Outspoken Dissident SierraTimes 04.13.00 James Dalton Bell may remind you of somebody you know. He's very bright, dresses and looks like a nerd and, most importantly, he dislikes the IRS. In that last respect, he is not in a minority. Where Jim Bell does fall into a minority is that instead of merely grumbling quietly, he decided to do something about it. And that's why he was just convicted in the Washington Federal District Court in Tacoma on Tuesday [4/10/2001]. Jim Bell has been a lifelong libertarian, ever since he was a teenager. Bell's view of government was that it was unnecessary. Is he an anarchist? Only, as he puts it, in the sense of "I believe in order; I do not believe in orders." He disparaged the huge hierarchies that have evolved in current bureaucracies, and believed that such hierarchies were unresponsive and dehumanizing. And, as Bell would personally learn, such a hierarchy creates two classes as outlined in George Orwell's Animal Farm: those who are part of the government hierarchy, and those who are not. [...] Bell, in his defense, stated that he had signed the LP oath that he would not initiate violence. And there was absolutely no direct evidence that he had ever initiated violence against anyone. People that he had come in contact with in his 2000 investigation characterized him as polite, and did not see him as threat. And Bell had obviously taken no discernible steps that would equip him to initiate violence. So what the government was left with was prosecuting a thought crime: intent. Because Bell had used his freedom of political speech to write such items as "Assassination Politics" and disclose IRS agents' home addresses, he obviously had to have the intent to harass federal agents. And the harassment was loosely construed. Any attempt to find or disclose any personal information about an agent can be made to fit federal law against "intention to harass or injure" an agent. Several times during the trial, the prosecutor made it clear that such an investigation was inappropriate and illegal merely on the basis that the subjects of such investigation were federal agents. Numerous times he cited the special privilege that agents hold that ordinary citizens don't possess. Federal agents are, indeed, a breed apart and must be specially protected, he insisted. While they could surveil and investigate ordinary citizens, it was illegal for ordinary citizens to do the same to them. [...] *** http://civilliberty.about.com/newsissues/civilliberty/library/weekly/aa041101a.htm Jim Bell's show trial Cypherpunk Jim Bell was found guilty of making the feds nervous Dateline: 4/11/01 Jim Bell has been probed, raided and arrested. He spent time in prison for "obstructing" Internal Revenue Service agents and using a false Social
Re: ecash, cut choose and private credentials (Re: Jim Bell)
Adam Back wrote: I think the thing that killed MT / digicash for this application was MT at the time was reported to be closing accounts related to pornography -- they apparently didn't want the reputation for providing payment mechanisms for the porn industry or something. James Donald replied: Payee traceability made it possible to close accounts related to pornography. Ecash is not truly cash like if the issuer can prevent it from being used by tax evaders, child pornographers, money launderers and terrorists. Payee traceability had nothing to do with it. Every customer of MTB, whether an end user or a merchant, had to fully identify himself to the bank, including SSN and for merchants, type of business, etc. This is SOP for other payment systems like credit cards. It was on this basis that MTB was able to screen their merchants. No payee tracing was necessary. A fully untraceable cash system would have been equally amenable to merchant screening. Any vendor has the right to control whom it does business with, and MTB chose to exercise its discretion in this way. The Texas couple in the news recently made a different choice and decided to provide payment services for child pornographers, as James Donald recommends. Now MTB is still in business (after merging with MTL and then FSR) and the Texans are in jail. Which made a better choice?
Re: ecash, cut choose and private credentials (Re: Jim Bell)
At 11:24 PM 12/3/00 -0800, Ray Dillinger wrote: On Mon, 4 Dec 2000, Adam Back wrote: The protocols you list are online. Not that this is a bad thing -- I kind of prefer the online idea -- rather than the "and then you go to jail" implications of fraud tracing in the offline protocols. Plus you have a risk of accidentally double spending if your computer crashes or something. I think that would depend on the banker. "Bob spent this hundred dollars three times," muses Alice. "Check and see if he's got overdraft protection for the extra two hundred... if he doesn't, then put it on his credit card with a fifteen dollar loan orignation fee and charge him two percent a month" Jail time, in most cases, probably just isn't profitable for the bankers. After all, The issue isn't whether jail or just extra charges are the appropriate remedy for double-spending - it's that the offline methods generally rely on encoding a user's name in the coins so you can tell who did the double spending, which not only adds a lot of administrative overhead but requires that you have a system of identification of your users. Some online methods also do the "identify and punish" approach; others do the far simpler "first one to grab the money wins" approach to double-spending, which is better for anonymity, though it imposes different risks on the users. Thanks! Bill Bill Stewart, [EMAIL PROTECTED] PGP Fingerprint D454 E202 CBC8 40BF 3C85 B884 0ABE 4639
Re: ecash, cut choose and private credentials (Re: Jim Bell)
Ben wrote: different process. I don't think you can do efficient offline ecash with Wagner et al's mechanism -- I'd guess it's more comparable with the functionality offered by Chaum's blind signature. I'm not sure what you think the requirements for "efficient offline ecash" are, but I should note that the double-blinded version of lucre doesn't require the ZKP, and there's also a non-interactive variant of the ZKP for the single-blinded variant. They are both described in the current version of the paper (at least, I'm sure the first as, and somewhat sure the second is). Offline means offline with fraud-tracing in event of double spending, so the efficiency refers to the computation and communication cost of the withdraw and deposit protocols which do the normal ecash thing, plus encode identity in the coin in the withdraw protocol in a way which will be revealed in a double spent show protocol. The protocols you list are online. Not that this is a bad thing -- I kind of prefer the online idea -- rather than the "and then you go to jail" implications of fraud tracing in the offline protocols. Plus you have a risk of accidentally double spending if your computer crashes or something. Adam
Re: ecash, cut choose and private credentials (Re: Jim Bell)
-- Adam Back wrote: Hal says: http://www.finney.org/~hal/chcash1.html and http://www.finney.org/~hal/chcash2.html Wow look at the dates on those files -- Oct 93, and we still no deployed ecash. You'd think there would be a market there for porn sites alone with merchant repudiation rates, and lack of privacy in other payment systems. The obvious starting market for good ecash is perverse pornography. Another good starting market is interactive sexual performance over the internet. There have been many attempts at ecash, but I am not aware of any products involving useful, spendable, convenient, anonymous ecash targeted at that or similar markets. The only really usable anonymous ecash was that of the Mark Twain bank, which crippled its cash to prevent it from being used by that market. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG cuh+C3eQWhWRJIpgp5acy1daeH/5d+NO2bZhXHVs 4Hv1Pc6eHQUlIx4xPSzdjsiVbnVV9HicHxjPDRDxk
Re: ecash, cut choose and private credentials (Re: Jim Bell)
On Tue, Nov 28, 2000 at 11:50:43PM -0500, Adam Back wrote: I was going to read about visa cash -- but more fscking shockwave -- the frontpage is shockwave no less so you get zip information out of them. I already showed it to Adam, but in case anybody else was wondering: There is not in fact any information on that web site, other than a bombastic animated "under construction" sign and an e-mail address.
Re: ecash, cut choose and private credentials (Re: Jim Bell)
I wrote: [2] Hal Finney used to have a description of Chaum's protocol on rain.org but he's at www.finney.org/~hal/ now and I can't find the link. Hal says: http://www.finney.org/~hal/chcash1.html and http://www.finney.org/~hal/chcash2.html Wow look at the dates on those files -- Oct 93, and we still no deployed ecash. You'd think there would be a market there for porn sites alone with merchant repudiation rates, and lack of privacy in other payment systems. www.digicash.com has some blurbs about "solutions", a few "demos" -- actually shockwave animations I can't view under linux -- and a few press releases about deals -- but no indication of where would could go to download a client or obtain a real account. Another interesting and related use for ecash would be file distribution systems which use economics to resist DoS, and give people an incentive to run them, and profits to fuel the scaling of the system to scale. Examples are Mojonation's mojo and some of my and Ryan Lackey's earlier musings about eternity / cypherspace / distributed content sharing. So in the mean time we have privacy less things like paypal apparently getting reasonable adoption. I was going to read about visa cash -- but more fscking shockwave -- the frontpage is shockwave no less so you get zip information out of them. http://www.visacash.com/ Adam
Re: Jim Bell arrested, documents online
Greg Newby wrote: Do people on this list really believe that the solution to problems is to kill people? Or are we just getting sarcastic and frustrated? we've run this planet for a couple thousand years by way of killing people. never touch a running system, you know?
Re: Jim Bell
Newby puzzles: Right, I agree. But what I'd like to consider is a recipe for "plain ordinary" folk to conspire anonymously to commit murder. Not just any murder: murder for some of the people who (some people on this list have said), are needing killin'. If a bunch of crypto anarchists or whoever decide to knock off Bill Gates or Al Gore (who really didn't invent the Internet well enough...), you can bet someone will come looking pretty hard! Again, I see this as a serious problem in applied cryptography. Did you even bother to read AP? RTFM, dude!
Re: Jim Bell
At 7:45 PM -0800 on 11/27/00, Tim May wrote: (I think any of us could be called as witnesses to refute a state claim that he was deploying a real system!) Which, unfortunately, and IIRC, he actually *pled* to, nonetheless. Sheesh. Cheers, RAH -- - R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED] The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/ 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
Re: Jim Bell
The affidavit/complaint we link to at cluebot.com contains an allegation from the Feds that Bell only 'fessed up to (in previous interviews with l.e.) authoring the AP essays. I do not recall reading about, or writing about, Bell being charged with deploying a working AP system. No, they've been prosecuting him using far more mundane allegations of SSN misuse, stinkbombs, and stalking. AP just gives it all spice, I suppose. -Declan On Mon, Nov 27, 2000 at 11:46:14PM -0500, R. A. Hettinga wrote: At 7:45 PM -0800 on 11/27/00, Tim May wrote: (I think any of us could be called as witnesses to refute a state claim that he was deploying a real system!) Which, unfortunately, and IIRC, he actually *pled* to, nonetheless. Sheesh. Cheers, RAH -- - R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED] The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/ 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
Re: Jim Bell
At 1:19 AM -0500 on 11/28/00, Declan McCullagh wrote: I do not recall reading about, or writing about, Bell being charged with deploying a working AP system. Hmmm... Maybe it was Toto's ersatz-AP web page I was remembering, now that I think about it, which, of course, Toto *didn't* plead to... Cheers, RAH -- - R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED] The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/ 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
Re: Jim Bell
At 1:19 AM -0500 11/28/00, Declan McCullagh wrote: The affidavit/complaint we link to at cluebot.com contains an allegation from the Feds that Bell only 'fessed up to (in previous interviews with l.e.) authoring the AP essays. I do not recall reading about, or writing about, Bell being charged with deploying a working AP system. No, they've been prosecuting him using far more mundane allegations of SSN misuse, stinkbombs, and stalking. AP just gives it all spice, I suppose. More than spice, I think. I think _this_ time they plan to make AP part of their case. As your own article said, "When the feds searched Bell's home earlier this month, according to a one-page attachment to the search warrant, agents were looking for "items which refer to Assassination Politics."" I won't engage in the kind of speculation about how they might build their case, but I think this is where they are going. Granted, they will not try to claim that Bell was running a real AP lottery. But they may make claims that he was planning an assassination. Some jurors might be swayed by the language in AP and by the (alleged) utterance: "Say goodnight, Joshua." (Wasn't Joshua the computer in "War Games"?) On Mon, Nov 27, 2000 at 11:46:14PM -0500, R. A. Hettinga wrote: At 7:45 PM -0800 on 11/27/00, Tim May wrote: (I think any of us could be called as witnesses to refute a state claim that he was deploying a real system!) Which, unfortunately, and IIRC, he actually *pled* to, nonetheless. Sheesh. No, I don't recall any such plea. Inasmuch as AP is some years off into the future, as even Bell would probably acknowledge (and may have acknowledged, if one dredges up all of his posts and looks at them carefully), I doubt he'd make a plea agreement that he had deployed a working AP system. I think AP was just hovering on the periphery in the first two rounds. This time they may try to make it a more central part of some case. Hence my comment that some of us may be called by the defense to explain why AP could not possibly be an operational system at this time. --Tim May -- (This .sig file has not been significantly changed since 1992. As the election debacle unfolds, it is time to prepare a new one. Stay tuned.)
Re: Jim Bell arrested, documents online
Bear surmised: The "Needs Killing" verbiage you see here, I think, is mostly from people who, correctly or not, tend to think in terms either of there not being any governments, or in terms of the government being so ineffective that they are effectively in an ungoverned state. Hold on. "Needs killing" is an epithet, like "fuck your mother" or in earlier theocratic days, "go to hell." It's a residue of a time when killing somebody who profaned your beliefs was done. It gets attention in some circles for different reasons. I like to read it because it reminds of my childhood in Texas when it was used with deliberate intent, and not used casually, for it could led to getting killed yourself, in justifiable self-defense. Back then, saying "fuck your mother" was said only by the Mexicans, "chinga tu madre," or something thing like that, and it always led to physical mayhem among the god-fearing who felt obliged to protect the virginity of their mother. Don't laugh. Men killed each other for that. I got my ass whipped for using phrase on a Mex-Tex buddy, no pause, he just methodicaly beat me to shit. There are still people around whom you better not say to their face, "you need killing." Those with guns, for example. It's okay on the Internet, though, hell, you can even threaten to kill a particular judge if you mean it as a joke. Greg, ease up, everybody here knows AP is a prank. Jim Bell and Jeff Gordon are a "seven forbidden words" comedy team. Not that Western Washington District has caught on yet that AP's only "fuck your mother."
Re: Jim Bell arrested, documents online
Do people on this list really believe that the solution to problems is to kill people? Or are we just getting sarcastic and frustrated? (Yes, I know Tim May believes people should be killed, but he's just a fuckhead bag of hot air.) Seems to me that anarchy where people solve their problems by killing people isn't much of a solution to anything. Relying Tell that to the Third Reich. Oh, I forgot, you can't. They're dead. -- A quote from Petro's Archives: ** "Despite almost every experience I've ever had with federal authority, I keep imagining its competence." John Perry Barlow
Re: Jim Bell arrested, documents online
The "Needs Killing" verbiage you see here, I think, is mostly from people who, correctly or not, tend to think in terms either of there not being any governments, or in terms of the government being so ineffective that they are effectively in an ungoverned state. Or from people who feel the government has lost it's moral authority to be the single arbiter of the use of force. -- A quote from Petro's Archives: ** "Despite almost every experience I've ever had with federal authority, I keep imagining its competence." John Perry Barlow
Re: Jim Bell arrested, documents online
On Wed, 22 Nov 2000, Eric Cordian wrote: The implications are that in a society where the government has not made personal privacy and private communication illegal, you can't be an asshole to countless millions of people without winding up with a price on your head. The thing about money is, there's no property of it that says it takes a lot of people to have a lot of money. Think about the very early days of Linux, for example. It would have been worth several million to Bill Gates if Linus Torvalds had just suddenly "disappeared". Not because Linus was acting like an asshole to countless millions of people, but just because Linus was acting like an asshole to one person who had billions of dollars. And given the anonymity of the proposed assassination market, nobody would have known exactly whom to take revenge on when Linus got whacked. This is what free markets do; they reward people who use them efficiently with financial power on a scale that millions of ordinary people can't match even if they all work together. Now Bill G. has used every market he's ever dealt with efficiently, to increase Microsoft's Market share and shut out all alternatives. Why do you think he (or people like him) would be any less competent in the use of an assassination market? Disputes with employees, and displeasure over Windows needing frequent rebooting, really don't rise to this level of visceral discontent. "displeasure over windows rebooting" has gotten pretty visceral for me at times -- Two years ago, I spent a whole day poking hex codes into a BIOS to try to get back the contents of a crashed windows disk which contained all contacts and records for our company's first round of venture capitalization and our company's first major client. The stakes were well over a million and a half dollars. And yes, it was bad information management on our business developer's part, but we were only four guys at the time and didn't have corporate information policy going yet. You wanna bet, if fifty or eighty people a year find themselves in that position, and fail to get their info back, that at least twenty or thirty of them wouldn't put a grand or more on Bill's head? I got my files back, so I didn't have to deal with that. But these days I use Linux at home... I won't even *steal* windows software any more, running it is too much of a risk. Bear
Re: Jim Bell arrested, documents online
On Tue, 21 Nov 2000, Ray Dillinger wrote: http://www.jya.com/ap.htm. It seems to me that he has a not-very-realistic view of how laws are interpreted in courts, and no understanding at all that governments will make new laws or amend old ones as needed to cover new situations. From what I gather from the document, the Jim's presentation seems only to chart the current situation, be based on the assumption that police state tactics aren't employed (of course they are, one very real use of AP as a theory is to highlight that it is impossible to both have civil rights *and* control people by force simultaneously after sufficiently strong and error resilient anonymity has arrived) and most of all, the wording suggests that Jim, very wisely, was trying to cover his butt. Not surprisingly, and precisely as you say, the Men with Guns do not seem to care. Even if they couldn't find a specific law to charge the operator of an AP server with, or couldn't get a conviction on the laws they'd charged him/her with, they would doubtless issue a court order commanding the operators of the server to cease and desist. Yep. That's probably one side of the whole argument: if you try to control people by force when they have strong anonymity available, they'll have very efficient means of resisting the control. Short of really dumping every civil right there is and putting up a Big Brother effort Orwell himself couldn't envision there is very little that can be done. Hence, the only way to reconsile anonymity with a fair state monopoly on violence is to minimize the state and the violence it exerts. This neatly sums up both AP and most cypherpunkish ideas on cryptoanarchy and libertarianism. Sampo Syreeni [EMAIL PROTECTED], aka decoy, student/math/Helsinki university
Jim Bell arrested, documents online
Check out the affidavit/complaint at: http://www.cluebot.com/article.pl?sid=00/11/21/1944238 Background documents: http://www.cluebot.com/article.pl?sid=00/11/11/101218 Wired News article on arrest: http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,40300,00.html -Declan
Re: CDR: Jim Bell arrested, documents online
At 01:36 PM 11/21/00 -0800, Declan McCullagh wrote: Check out the affidavit/complaint at: http://www.cluebot.com/article.pl?sid=00/11/21/1944238 Background documents: http://www.cluebot.com/article.pl?sid=00/11/11/101218 Wired News article on arrest: http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,40300,00.html -Declan So what're the sentencing guidelines for harassment of federal officials? I hope James will argue that he was gathering addresses so that he could picket them (which is legal). Petition the government for redress of grievances... I know James gets carried away with rhetoric. It' better to say things in such a way that you are immune to prosecution. You can say and do pretty much the same things. It's all in the words. DCF Mods vs. Trads. Mods are much less likely than Trads to form lasting family relationships, they kill themselves and others much more frequently, they suffer more from drug and substance abuse, they are more prone to disease, they even have a higher accident rate, they have lower family incomes, their MMPIs are much more jagged, their life expectancy is shorter, and they score lower on tests designed to show levels of personal happiness or satisfaction. Sounds like a maladaption to me.
Re: CDR: Jim Bell arrested, documents online
On Tue, 21 Nov 2000, Duncan Frissell wrote: So what're the sentencing guidelines for harassment of federal officials? I hope James will argue that he was gathering addresses so that he could picket them (which is legal). Petition the government for redress of grievances... I know James gets carried away with rhetoric. It' better to say things in such a way that you are immune to prosecution. You can say and do pretty much the same things. It's all in the words. I have just read his paper on Assassination Politics, at http://www.jya.com/ap.htm. It seems to me that he has a not-very-realistic view of how laws are interpreted in courts, and no understanding at all that governments will make new laws or amend old ones as needed to cover new situations. Basically, assassination is illegal, and the courts will interpret the law in whatever way they need to in order to stop assassinations from happening. There may be technical arguments against specific "Misprision of Felony" and "conspiracy to commit murder" laws, but if AP results in killings being performed and killers getting paid, a court cannot possibly return a verdict that permits AP to continue. The choices are therefore "guilty" and "stop it now." I'd put heavy money on "Guilty", myself. Even if they couldn't find a specific law to charge the operator of an AP server with, or couldn't get a conviction on the laws they'd charged him/her with, they would doubtless issue a court order commanding the operators of the server to cease and desist. Also, if they couldn't get a conviction according to the law in any particular state on any particular date, the state would instantly follow up the court order by either passing a specific law against it or amending the wording of their existing "conspiracy to commit" law or "Misprision of Felony" laws. In light of his position that AP is legal and his assumption that, if found so, it could possibly remain so for more than a few hours, I'd have to doubt that he's sufficiently aware of how the law works to make the reasonable argument that you suggest. Unless, of course, it happens to be true. Bear
Re: Jim Bell arrested, documents online
Declan writes: Check out the affidavit/complaint at: http://www.cluebot.com/article.pl?sid=00/11/21/1944238 And from the aforementioned document... On or about October 23, 2000, at Vancouver, within the Western District of Washington, James Dalton Bell did travel across a state line from the state of Washington to the state of Oregon with the intent to injure or harrass another person, to wit, Mike McNall, and as a result of such travel placed Mike McNall in reasonable fear of death or serious bodily injury to himself, and to his immediate family. On or about October 23, 2000, at Vancouver, within the Western District of Washington, James Dalton Bell did travel across a state line from the state of Washington to the state of Oregon with the intent to injure or harrass another person, to wit, Jeff Gordon, and as a result of such travel placed Jeff Gordon in reasonable fear of death or serious bodily injury to himself, and to his immediate family. What an unmitigated crock of shit. Who would have imagined that anti-stalking laws, originally sold to the public with tear-jerking tales of battered women needing to be protected from violent boyfriends and spouses, would be employed by jackbooted thugs claiming to be in fear of their lives because publically available information about them is in the possession of the citizens they harrass and persecute. Clearly Jackboot-Americans feel they should be completely exempt from ordinary rules of accountability which apply to all other Americans, and that the state apparatus should be at their beck and call to carry out personal attacks against their critics. Laws on terrorism, conspiracy, and harrassment are being twisted daily to do an endrun around the First Amendment, and convictions are being won, and case law is being created, which says this is all fine and dandy. It's gotten to the point where one may not exercise ones right to free speech, unless one gives up ones right to freedom of action, and vice versa. One can say what one thinks of government officials, as long as one does not engage in any behavior, however legal, which constitutes action in support of that speech. And conversely, one may engage in legal action, as long as one gives up ones right to engage in legal speech. To engage in both legal action and legal speech at the same time, is to risk having the government twist ones actions into a conspiracy, and to risk getting convicted under the new plethora of laws sold to the public under various disingenuous guises, or under old laws given new interpretations. It's not necessary that the legal speech and legal action have any genuine relation. If you say the government is corrupt, and you belong to a militia, and play paintball games in the woods on weekends, then you are obviously conspiring to overthrow the government in word and deed. Similarly, it's perfectly legal to own nitric acid, and it's perfectly legal to say that IRS agents deserve to be dissolved in nitric acid, but it's very dangerous to ones personal freedom to do both at the same time. It's perfectly legal to possess publicly available information on government employees, and to possess chemicals, and electronic devices. It's also legal to go anywhere one pleases, on public property, and even on private property to ring doorbells and ask people questions, as long as one leaves when one is asked to. It's also perfectly legal to hold satirical legal proceedings against public officials, for the purpose of making a political statement. It's perfectly legal to speculate on cryptographic solutions to government corruption. But if one person does all these things simultaneously, one risks being the subject of a contrived fairy tale, written by a boob like Jeff Gordon, sprinkled with innuendo, and rubber stamped by a judge as inerrant scripture, which makes one look like the next Osama Bin Laden. So the First Amendment is effectively dead, not repealed by the will of the people, but suffocated in the dead of night by Jackboot-Americans like Jeff Gordon and his pals. (puke) -- Eric Michael Cordian 0+ O:.T:.O:. Mathematical Munitions Division "Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law"
Re: Jim Bell arrested, documents online
On Tue, 21 Nov 2000, Eric Cordian wrote: On or about October 23, 2000, at Vancouver, within the Western District of Washington, James Dalton Bell did travel across a state line from the state of Washington to the state of Oregon with the intent to injure or harrass another person, to wit, Mike McNall, and as a result of such travel placed Mike McNall in reasonable fear of death or serious bodily injury to himself, and to his immediate family. On or about October 23, 2000, at Vancouver, within the Western District of Washington, James Dalton Bell did travel across a state line from the state of Washington to the state of Oregon with the intent to injure or harrass another person, to wit, Jeff Gordon, and as a result of such travel placed Jeff Gordon in reasonable fear of death or serious bodily injury to himself, and to his immediate family. What an unmitigated crock of shit. Who would have imagined that anti-stalking laws, originally sold to the public with tear-jerking tales of battered women needing to be protected from violent boyfriends and spouses, would be employed by jackbooted thugs claiming to be in fear of their lives because publically available information about them is in the possession of the citizens they harrass and persecute. Furthermore, Vancouver is damn near a suburb of Portland, OR. Most people in Vancouver cross the state line to avoid Washington sales tax. (I guess that makes them tax evaders as well. I wonder if Jim will get taged with that one.) sounds like Jeff Gordon is looking for a victim so he can justify a pay increase and/or promotion. So the First Amendment is effectively dead, not repealed by the will of the people, but suffocated in the dead of night by Jackboot-Americans like Jeff Gordon and his pals. (puke) Yep. [EMAIL PROTECTED] | Note to AOL users: for a quick shortcut to reply Alan Olsen| to my mail, just hit the ctrl, alt and del keys. "In the future, everything will have its 15 minutes of blame."
Jim Bell Arrested
A family member says Jim Bell was arrested last night when he went out to the store. The person also said the feds were searching for e-mail Jim sent around August 18. I can't prove the family member is that and not a fisher.
Wired article on Jim Bell, links to search warrant and photo
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,40102,00.html
IRS Raids Cypherpunk's House
by Declan McCullagh ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
2:00 a.m. Nov. 11, 2000 PST
WASHINGTON -- When a dozen armed federal agents invaded Jim Bell's
home this week, he wasn't exactly surprised.
Ever since Bell, a cypherpunk whom the U.S. government has dubbed a
techno-terrorist, was released from prison in April, he's predicted
another confrontation with the Feds.
"They're basically trying to harass me," Bell said in a telephone
interview. He has not been arrested or charged with a crime.
In 1996, Bell attracted the unwelcome attention of the IRS and the
U.S. Secret Service after they learned he was talking up a plan to
promote the assassination of miscreant bureaucrats through an unholy
mix of encryption, anonymity and digital cash. Bell even gave his
scheme a catchy title: "Assassination Politics."
Four years, three arrests and one plea-bargain later, Bell was
released from the medium-security federal penitentiary in Phoenix,
Arizona. Since then, he's been busy trying to prove allegations of
illegal surveillance on the part of the Feds, including his charge
that they unlawfully bugged his home.
For Bell, that meant spending the last six months compiling personal
information about IRS and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms
agents, a move that appears to have led to the six-hour search of his
home in Vancouver, Washington.
Government offices were closed on Friday, and representatives were
unavailable for comment. But the agents' search warrant cites
"evidence of violations" of a federal law that prohibits intimidation
of IRS agents.
[...]
***
I've included links to the original documents in this article:
http://www.cluebot.com/article.pl?sid=00/11/11/101218mode=nested
Feds Raid Cypherpunk Jim Bell
posted by declan on Saturday November 11, @05:58AM
from the now-who-saw-this-coming? dept.
Crypto-convict Jim Bell, best known for popularizing the idea
of offing Feds through anonymity, encryption, and digital cash,
was raided this week by the IRS and BATF. He has not been arrested and
is irate, vengeful, and computer-less, but otherwise fine. This
happened just half a year after he was released from prison. We've
placed JPGs online of the search warrant, vehicle search warrant,
justification, and list of items taken. Note the justification
includes items related to his "Assassination Politics" scheme. We also
offer some background and a surprisingly flattering color slide photo
I took of Bell.
*
Photo:
http://www.mccullagh.org/image/9/jim-bell-3.html
Re: Looking for Jim Bell
At 8:00 PM -0400 4/14/00, Declan McCullagh wrote: Jim seems to be actively pursuing his own agenda, and it's difficult to guess what it is. But I don't regret writing this article: He's getting out of jail, and what he does next is interesting and newsworthy. In fact, John, I emailed you and phoned you for comment when I was writing my article and you never replied. I'm glad Declan neither e-mailed me nor tried to phone me (that I know of--my line is often busy) for my comments. I figure about the only way I avoided being called in the "C.J. Parker/Toto" case was because I'd never, to my knowledge, corresponded with Toto, nor had I written anything admissible in court in his case. I had a few exchanges with Jim Bell, early on, and I educated him a bit on untraceable digital cash (Hal Finney had seen his early posts in sci.crypto, or somesuch, and had referred him to my writings on untraceabe contract killings, circa 1992-4). "Never interfere with a man's path to Hell" is essentiallly the libertarian credo, after Heinlein. Neo_Calvinism and all. It may be that Jim Bell is dead set on returning to prison. I may think that many millions need killing, and that gun grabbers and such in particular need killing, but I make it a point to never mention any particular names. In fact, I try to never even clutter my mind with the specific names of agents, judges, or other gubment employees. Some I cannot escape remembering--Jeff Gordon, Lon Horiuchi, Janet Reno, Louis Freeh, Bill Clinton--but the rest I avoid remembering if at all possible. This makes it easy to avoid ever threatening specific individuals (or abstract individuals in specific offices, e.g., the NSA or CIA or whatever). I have no idea whether Jim Bell will be able to deploy an "Assassination Politics" system. I _do_ know that an essential element of such systems is untraceablility, deniablity. If I were deploying such a system, for example, I certainly wouldn't do it so publically and traceably. Were I do such a thing, I'd expect to spend a considerable amount of effort and money in ensuring deniability...setting up an account in a cut out house in Ensenada would be only the first step, for example. Meanwhile, I avoid worrying about specific judges, agents, and suchlike. Speech is still free, and we can't be prosecuted in even these Beknighted States for expressing general beliefs and for discussing software, scenarios, etc. Only by making _specific_ threats (esp. threats against the Supreme Leader or His judges) can the Federales attempt prosecution. In other words, I'm not too worried. (But, just in case, I still have my FAL and HK-91 rifles, unspecified chemical deterrents, alarms, and such. I'm about to close a deal to acquire a large amount of Lexan sheeting and other shielding materials. If the Fedz raid my house, for speaking in Unapproved Ways, I hope dozens of them will bleed out in my driveway, wailing for Momma Reno to save them. Call me bloodthirsty, but I think those who violate the U.S. Constitution have earned slow and painful deaths.) But I don't expect such a raid. The Feds go after those who do stupid, and prosecutable, things--like using phony SS tattoos, er, numbers, like spreading stink gas in buildings, and like making specific threats. I don't do any of those things. Still, I'm ready to start shooting if anyone unexpected is found on my hill. --Tim May -- -:-:-:-:-:-:-: Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
