Matthew Findley wrote:
Your correct. If the government kicked down your door right now and saw freenet running on your computer nothing would happen. Because they could not prove a crime is taking place.
Well, we disagree on this but I doubt we'll get much further. You say I'd go free for lack of evidence. I say it's not a matter of evidence and I'd go free for lack of intent, with or without the evidence.
It's really not up to me to deicded weather or not you had probable knowledge that you were commiting a crime. That's what a jury is for.
It wasn't a jury who stated categorically
Willful blindness can not protect you if it can be shown that you had a reasonable suspicion to believe they you are committing a crime. In fact in some cases a deliberate attempt to not obtain knowledge is proof of that knowledge.
a few days ago, was it?
I've never ment to imply that you would be found guility just because traffic was intrecepted. Only that you could be arrested and charged. The facts of the case still need to be proven, one of which is that you had a resonable knowdlge of your facilitation of a crime.
Top-quoting is an abomination for many reasons, one of which is that it makes you lose track of what you are replying to.
You are supposed to be replying to this:
I note that that law you pointed to says "believing it probable that he is rendering aid to a person who intends to commit a crime". This still requires the probablity before the act of facilitation to apply to a concrete person and a concrete crime. That is: if I know it is probable that X will commit Y crime using my node and yet provide my node to Y, I might go down for facilitating his crime. With freenet though, this is never the case. You don't know for a probable fact that any concrete person will use your node to commit any concrete crime.
I argue that "reasonable knowledge of my facilitation of a crime" does not match the requisites of the law that you yourself pointed me to. I say that you need SPECIFIC REASONS which would cause a reasonable person to believe that IT IS PROBABLE, not only possible, that he is facilitating A CONCRETE CRIME being committed by A CONCRETE PERSON. This means that even if I know that kiddie porn is flowing around freenet, as long as I don't have a specific reason to believe that an illegal image is being up- or downloaded through my node, I am not required to act against it. Your reply is nothing but an over-simplifying repetition of what you already said before, and it is self-contradictory too.
The only thing I have ever said with regard to freenet is it is ilegal to transmit KP.
To which I replied that you are wrong, that transmitting kiddie porn is not illegal, that only INTENTIONALLY transmitting kiddie porn is illegal. This lead us to the whole willful blindness discussion, which resulted in the paragraph above about concrete probability of a concrete crime, which you not-too-skillfully manoeuvered around instead of responding to.
Which even though I'm not convaying the offical position of the DOJ. I think we can all agree this is their position.
And the government does give us smoke and lunch brakes you know ;)
Look, one thing I really detest is people taking me to be stupid. I know damn well the government gives you lunch breaks. Now, answer, didn't the government tell you that you are not allowed to use its computers for personal business? Did it or did it not, yes or no?
And even if it didn't, you should have realised yourself that a posting *on legal matters* coming from a DoJ address is bound to be perceived as at least semi-official, no matter what. It is the combination of DoJ and legal issue that puts you there; it would have been a wholly different situation if you had been commenting on technical matters from a DoJ address.
Now then, don't you know that it is against government rules to make statements which are bound to be perceived as official unless they actually are official? Of course you know that. Of course you didn't risk your job for something as thoughless and stupid as using your DoJ address for private business that's unrelated to your work. So, where does that leave us? How many rocket scientists do you think it takes to add 1+1?
Thus, thank you Mr Findley, your message that the DoJ is watching us has come across loud and clear. Your message "with this posting I am putting you all in bad faith, you can't claim ignorance after I have drawn your attention to [etc]" came across fine too. If reception at your end is as good as here, please inform your boss that hardly anyone gives a damn about his opinions, unless he cares to make them truly official and sign them with his name.
Though straying from the real topic.
I know of none of the prosecutors in the office where I work who are only out to get convections.
You don't read newspapers, do you? Good thing that the net can help you out. Go read http://www.icadp.org/page256.html and then tell me how it's possible that more than a hundred death penalties in one single state appear as highly questionable when a bunch of students examine them, and how come that 18 people headed for the chair have already been exonerated thanks to those students. Was it consciencious prosecutors who put those people in the death row to begin with?
Or would you rather discuss the wide-spread practice of entrapment, through which people are induced by the police to commit crimes, so that they can subsequently be prosecuted? Mr Findley, you work for a rotten system, you live in a rotten system, and you probably even vote for a rotten system.
You can rest assured that if they come after you they belive you have commited a crime. Federal prosecutors are not just random lawyers that are picked up off the street. They are some of the best in the country. They are accountable to many levels through out the DOJ and any cases where they are found to abuse their position are delt with swiftly.
Yeah, I feel better now. I feel really assured. Thank you.
Your right we would have to show when your node transmitted ilegal matterials. But assumeing freenet has been cracked and your traffic is being monitered. This would be quite easy.
You missed my lack of intent/lack of willful blindness yet again. You missed the fact that I have no way of knowing if and in such case when my node begins to transmit illegal material, so that I can act against that. This discussion is like an ill-programmed piece of software stuck in an endless loop. Try control-C. After all, we don't want anyone to think that you can't even follow a simple argument; that would reflect bad on the hiring standards of your employer.
Z
-- Framtiden är som en babianröv, färggrann och full av skit. Arne Anka _______________________________________________ chat mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://news.gmane.org/gmane.network.freenet.general
