-Caveat Lector- from: http://www.aci.net/kalliste/ <A HREF="http://www.aci.net/kalliste/">The Home Page of J. Orlin Grabbe</A> ----- Cypherpunks on Trail Days 3 and 4 of the Carl Johnson Show Trial Expert testimony on the nature of a "mailing list" Subject: FC: Day 3 of Washington State Cypherpunk Trial Date: Wed, 14 Apr 1999 23:59:02 -0700 From: Declan McCullagh To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] I am writing this from the 16th floor of the Sheraton in Tacoma, Washington, overlooking a humorless and silent downtown. Somewhere nearby -- I don' t know exactly where -- a cypherpunk is sitting behind bars waiting for his trial to resume in the morning. The charge: That he is guilty of posting three threatening messages to the cypherpunks mailing list. The government is asking for years and years of prison time as punishment. I suppose the exact number (a decade? 20 years?) will depend on the federal sentencing guidelines, rules that I've never been quite able to figure out myself. On Thursday morning John Gilmore will take the witness stand again. He testified on Wednesday about what a mailing list is, and the defense counsel gets to ask him questions in the morning. A few government folks are in line after him, but neither the prosecutor nor IRS agent Jeff Gordon has revealed who will testify next. I'm told there's no trial on Friday. So unless I get called to testify Thursday-- a long shot, I'm told -- I will be back out here next week. I don't know if the Department of Justice will try to force me to stay in Tacoma over the weekend or not. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Free Speech on Trial in Tacoma by Declan McCullagh Wired News, April 15, 1999 TACOMA, Washington -- Very few Americans like the IRS, especially when April 15 rolls around. But most taxpayers are discreet enough to keep their feelings to themselves, and not mouth off about how nice it would be to see the IRS eliminated. At least, not on an electronic mailing list populated with Treasury Department agents. Carl Johnson, however, is not someone known for his discretion. The gruff, bearded man, an itinerant musician and longtime computer geek, spent much of last year railing online against Bill Gates, various federal officials, and IRS agents. The IRS claims he went too far, crossing the line from hypothetical discussions of violence against "Law Enfarcement Offals" to actual threats. Based on three email messages allegedly typed by Johnson and sent to the cypherpunks mailing list, prosecutors arrested him and charged him with five counts of threats and obstruction of justice. The trial began here this week. Through his attorney, Johnson has denied the charges, saying anything he wrote is protected by the First Amendment's guarantees of freedom of speech. He may have a point. The vast majority of messages the government says Johnson wrote are darkly rambling satire, a kind of ASCII performance art, with titles such as "SPACE ALIENS HIDE MY DRUGS!!" One message likened the author to Patrick Henry. "The irony, of course, is that I do not pose a great danger to anyone but myself as long as I continue to have my human rights and my liberty unthreatened." The Supreme Court has said that advocating violence against government officials cannot be punished. In a 1969 case, the justices debated whether a Ku Klux Klan leader could be jailed for saying: "If our President, our Congress, our Supreme Court, continues to suppress the white, Caucasian race, it's possible that there might have to be some revengeance [sic] taken." The verdict: No. Such a law punishes "mere advocacy," the court decided. Earlier that year the court ruled that a man's stated wish to kill the president was political hyperbole. Johnson's attorney says his client's statements were also simple hyperbole. "They're outrageous statements made in a political forum as part of a political forum as part of a political discussion. It's obviously a parody and a spoof," Gene Grantham said in an interview Wednesday. "No rational person would be incited to do anything on the basis of those communications." The political discussion in question? A lawsuit sponsored by the Electronic Frontier Foundation that challenges the White House's restrictions on overseas shipments of encryption products. On 8 December 1997, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco heard the government's appeal in the case. The next day, a message titled "Encrypted InterNet DEATH THREAT!!!" appeared on the cypherpunks mailing list. The loose-knit group discusses the social and political impact of privacy-protecting software. The note, which mentioned the names of the judges hearing the case, read: "I will share the same 'DEATH THREAT!!!' with Judges Fletcher, Nelson, and Bright that I have shared with the President and a host of Congressional and Senatorial representatives. 'You can fuck some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you are going to end up in a body bag or a pine box before you manage to fuck all of the people all of the time.' Am *I* going to whack you out? Maybe..." But the message said the author was unlikely to do the deed himself. The note was posted anonymously -- but was digitally signed with a copy of the free encryption program PGP, or Pretty Good Privacy. The IRS has tried to link the digital key used to sign the message with a key owned by Johnson. That plan might well have worked, had Johnson been found to be the only person with that particular key. But two months after Johnson's arrest, a copy of the same key was anonymously distributed. "On October 13, 1998, an anonymous poster posted to the Cypherpunks an authentic copy of both the public and secret key used to encrypt the December 9, 1997 death threat message," the IRS says in a court document. Translation: Anyone who had the key could have posted the death threat. It's small wonder, then, that the IRS particularly dislikes anonymity, which is common on the cypherpunks list. In its pretrial brief, the government says: "Someone engaged in purely political speech would have no reason to hide his identity in a free society." Witnesses who have testified so far include government officials and special agents. On Thursday, EFF cofounder John Gilmore will testify about the nature of the cypherpunks mailing list and some of the archives of the list that he has kept. Editor's Note: Declan McCullagh has been subpoenaed by the government to testify in the Johnson trial. His testimony will relate to a series of articles that he wrote on Johnson's arrest last year. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Day 4: IRS Tries to Save Face Subject: FC: Day 4 of Washington State Cypherpunk Trial Date: Thu, 15 Apr 1999 19:03:28 -0700 From: Declan McCullagh To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 My testimony in the U.S. v. Johnson trial is over. Finally. It was a near thing, too. I finished at 4:20 pm today, and Judge Bryan halted proceedings for the week ten minutes later. I'm back at the Sheraton, in the bar on the top floor, overlooking the water, watching the sun ponder whether or not it's time to set. And I'm wondering about the trial that brought me and John and other folks out here in the first place. It is true that the defendant, cypherpunk Carl Johnson, is not someone likely to evoke sympathy. He has Tourette's syndrome and is a large, ungainly fellow. He is bearded and awkward. He doesn't have a lot of money. In short, he was a perfect target for IRS agent Jeff Gordon and government prosecutors looking to make a name for themselves as Internet savants. It almost worked. But as the investigation progressed, the IRS realized CJ was simply a fellow who ranted against the IRS and other agencies, usually in the form of satire. He wasn't connected with militia or common-law groups, as was a previous and well-publicized case that Gordon spearheaded and for which he took credit. CJ was just a guy trying to sell his music, which is actually pretty good, and who posted to cypherpunks in his spare time. So what did the IRS do to try and save face? Simple: Offer CJ a plea bargain for time served. He rejected it and chose a trial -- and the possibility of vindication. Will he get it? I don't know. The case involves just three "threatening" messages he allegedly sent to cypherpunks. Even if he did write them (which may be difficult to prove), I think they're protected by the First Amendment. I don't know if Judge Bryan will agree. I had never met CJ or spoken with him until this trial. But I couldn't help feeling sympathetic as he sat with his counsel today, deprived of not just an Internet connection but basic human dignity. When his brother entered the room, CJ tried to get up from his seat to say hello, but a horde of US marshals moved in and physically prevented him from rising. The trial resumes Monday. Now that John and I are done testifying, the trial may turn to more routine evidentiary matters. It will likely be over by Tuesday. - -Declan -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: PGPfreeware 6.0.2i iQA/AwUBNxaacD4oIjNdPtYXEQJAlACePL7CobiYOvNE4sHEOr7WPI1RolAAnAjr 4t/rzHtTvPFrJDIgh4kBV9TC =2HPc -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -------------------------------------------------------------------------- POLITECH -- the moderated mailing list of politics and technology To subscribe: send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with this text: subscribe politech More information is at http://www.well.com/~declan/politech/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Information Warfare Arrest Made in Internet Stock Hoax Faking Bloomberg's fake news A 25-year-old computer engineer employed by Pairgain Technologies Inc. was arrested Thursday in North Carolina and charged with securities fraud in connection with the posting of a fake announcement on the Internet last week about a takeover of the company. The swift tracing of the suspected origin of the Internet posting, which sent Pairgain's stock up more than 30 percent in heavy trading before the false takeover report was debunked, demonstrates once again how difficult it is to venture into cyberspace without leaving footprints. Gary Dale Hoke, who has worked at Pairgain's engineering development operation in Raleigh, N.C., since January 1997, was arrested at his home in Raleigh on Thursday morning on federal securities-fraud charges. After an appearance before a federal magistrate in North Carolina, he was released on a $50,000 unsecured bond. He agreed to appear at a future date in court in Los Angeles, where the charges were filed against him late Wednesday. Pairgain, a telecommunications equipment maker, is based in Tustin, Calif., southeast of Los Angeles in Orange County. Samuel Currin, an attorney representing Hoke, declined to comment on the veracity of the charges. "Obviously these are very serious allegations, and we're going to look very carefully at them," Currin said. Hoke could not be reached. Securities fraud carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison and a $1 million fine. According to the federal complaint, Hoke used an account at Angelfire, a service that allows people to create their own pages on the World Wide Web, to post a fake news article on April 7 reporting that Pairgain had agreed to be taken over by ECI Telecom Ltd., an Israeli company. After posting the fake article, which was designed to look like a page from the Web site of Bloomberg News, Hoke placed a message on an investment bulletin board operated by Yahoo alerting other investors to the "news" and providing an electronic link to the Angelfire site. The complaint does not specifically contend that Hoke traded in Pairgain stock on April 7, when the false article caused the company's shares to soar as high as $11.125, up from $8.50 the previous day. The shares closed that day at $9.375, up 10 percent. According to an affidavit filed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles by Craig Shackleford, a special agent of the FBI, Hoke has used online brokerage accounts at ETrade and Ameritrade to buy and sell stocks, trading in Pairgain shares as recently as January. The Angelfire and Yahoo accounts used by Hoke employed fake identities, according to the affidavit. But investigators were able to trace Hoke's activities via the Internet protocol addresses of the computers used to create and post the Angelfire and Yahoo messages, investigators said. Every computer linked to the Internet can be identified through a unique code known as an Internet protocol address, which can be used to trace the origin of a message or connection. Investigators said Hoke used computers at Pairgain, at his home and at Accipiter Inc., a Raleigh, N.C., company where Hoke also worked, to gain access to the Angelfire and Yahoo accounts and post the Internet messages. Charles McBrayer, Pairgain's chief financial officer, said in an interview that Hoke was "a midlevel engineer" in the Raleigh facility, which employs about 70 people and is Pairgain's largest operation outside Tustin. He has been suspended without pay, McBrayer said. As a midlevel engineer, Hoke would have had "a modest amount" of Pairgain stock options, McBrayer said. But he said he was not aware whether Hoke had exercised any options. "To our knowledge, he is the only one involved" in the fraud, McBrayer said. Christopher Painter, an assistant U.S. attorney in Los Angeles, said federal officials were still investigating the incident. The case demonstrates that some Internet sites are subject to abuse by people posing under false identities, in part because the sites do little to police who is setting up accounts. The Angelfire account used by Hoke, for example, was set up under the name "News Headlines," an unlikely name for an individual. An e-mail account set up with Hotmail, a free e-mail provider, used the same name. The message posted on the Yahoo bulletin board supposedly came from Stacey Lawson of Knoxville, Tenn., who in signing up for the Yahoo account claimed to be a 32-year-old information technology manager who liked tennis, dancing and water sports. In fact, the complaint said, that, too, was Hoke. The New York Times, April 16, 1999 Medical Advances THE RETURN OF THE HAND It lives! SURGEONS who sewed a dead man's hand on to the arm stump of a living patient last year say today that the operation has been a long-term success, opening an array of new possibilities in transplant medicine. Hair has now re-grown around the join between the pinkish hand and forearm of a 41-year-old accident victim and the forearm of Clint Hallam, 48. The skin of the transplanted hand is "warm to touch, dry and pale in colour" - and Mr Hallam can feel sensation if someone presses hard on the palm. "We have confirmed the technical feasibility of limb transplantation," the team says today in the Lancet. This is the first time that we have a human experiment where we have demonstrated to ourselves and to the world that it works," said Nadey Hakim, the surgical director of the Transplant Unit at St Mary's Hospital, London, who is a member of the team. Surgeons in the United States and Europe were amazed last September when the relatively unknown team announced its completion of the 13-hour operation in Lyon, France. Many experts were critical, saying it was too early in the science of transplants to attempt such a feat. They questioned the wisdom of turning a healthy amputee into an unhealthy two-hander. Mr Hallam, a New Zealand businessman, ran into controversy immediately after the operation when it transpired that he was a convicted fraudster who had lost his hand in a prison sawmill accident in 1984 and was wanted in Australia for questioning in relation to a marketing investment scheme. But the surgeons defend their choice in the Lancet, saying that Mr Hallam had passed extensive psychological tests. He had persistently refused offers of false arms and instead read up on medical literature and put himself on the lists of units considering hand transplants. His unconventional nature became apparent in January when he forsook physiotherapy and medical supervision to tour America and appear on chat shows. In Las Vegas he gambled at hotels along the "Strip" before the CBS television programme 48 Hours flew him to New York for an interview. In the Lancet report, the doctors acknowledge Mr Hallam's eight-week disappearance but say that, despite the lack of physiotherapy during this time, there appears to have been no damage. "He is living a perfectly normal life," Mr Hakim said. About 14 weeks after the operation, Mr Hallam developed feeling in his new wrist crease and by six months the feeling had spread to the mid-palm, where he can now feel deep pressure. The London Telegraph, April 16, 1999 ----- Aloha, He'Ping, Om, Shalom, Salaam. Em Hotep, Peace Be, Omnia Bona Bonis, All My Relations. Adieu, Adios, Aloha. Amen. Roads End Kris DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance�not soapboxing! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory', with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright frauds is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRL gives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credeence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. ======================================================================== Archives Available at: http://home.ease.lsoft.com/archives/CTRL.html http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ ======================================================================== To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
