Journalist Arresting for Criticizing Cops
In today's news of the truly odd. - KEY WEST, Fla. (AP) -- A newspaper editor and publisher was arrested for publishing an article alleging a cover-up in an internal police investigation he had filed an official complaint about, police records show. Dennis Cooper, 66, editor of the weekly Key West The Newspaper, was arrested Friday and released two hours later on his own recognizance. The affidavit for his arrest cites a Florida statute that makes it a misdemeanor for anyone involved in an internal police investigation to disclose information before it has been entered into public record. Cooper has alleged a police lieutenant lied in court about a 1996 stop of a bicyclist, and that the Key West Police Department covered it up. He filed a complaint last month with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement accusing an internal affairs investigator of falsifying information about his review of the incident. After receiving the complaint, the department asked Key West police to begin an investigation. Cooper had published articles accusing the investigator of wrongdoing before filing the complaint. -- Eric Michael Cordian 0+ O:.T:.O:. Mathematical Munitions Division Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law
Re: CDR: Notification of Internet Violations
Net Authority writes: Dear Joe Cypherpunk, It has recently been brought to our attention that you are, or have been, in violation of the Net Authority Acceptable Internet Usage Guidelines. It has been reported that you distribute and/or view offensive materials over the Internet. Net Authority has investigated these claims and verified that they are true. As a result, your personal information has been added to one or more Net Authority Internet offender databases. Your information will be stored in the databases until enough evidence has been gathered against you to warrant further actions. To help avoid such a situation, it is strongly recommended that you cease your immoral actions on the Internet at once. You have been added to the following databases: - Hate Literature Offenders - Pornography Offenders - Child Pornography Offenders - Bestiality Offenders - Homosexual Pornography Offenders - General Blasphemy Offenders Poor Joe Cypherpunk. First Mike Echols called him an Internet Child Sex Predator and Child Pornographer and now this. Oh, the humanity. -- Eric Michael Cordian 0+ O:.T:.O:. Mathematical Munitions Division Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law
Re: FBI frame-job
Someone wrote: #Stella Nickell has never stopped denying she killed her husband #Bruce with cyanide in 1986. But now her defense team says they #can prove her innocence. #Nickell, 57, is serving two 90-year prison terms after being #found guilty of putting cyanide in a pain-reliever capsule taken #by her husband and trying to hide the crime by tampering with #other bottles of the over-the-counter drug, which resulted in #a second death. I followed this case pretty closely when it broke, and the weight of circumstantial evidence struck me almost entirely as wishful thinking by law enforcement, combined with public hysteria over product tampering at the time. I wouldn't be at all surprised if she just had the misfortune to buy one of several bottles tainted by someone else, and after being traumatized by having her husband die in front of her, got fucked over by the system to boot. That the feds may have withheld evidence that proved her innocence isn't particularly startling either. -- Eric Michael Cordian 0+ O:.T:.O:. Mathematical Munitions Division Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law
Rental Cars Now Big Brother Enabled
Amusing little story about a minor rental car company that installed GPS in all its vehicles, and added fine print to its contracts to say that they will dock clients $150 each time they exceed the posted speed limit. One customer was unamused when they lifted an extra $450 off his debit card, and is taking them to court. http://www.newmassmedia.com/nac.phtml?code=newdb=nac_fearef=16435 - Coming to small claims court: Roadrunner vs. Acme Rent-a-Car. By Colleen Van Tassell Published 06/14/01 James Turner is taking Big Brother to small claims court. Turner's taking his own car. Big Brother's driving a rental. A rental outfitted with a high-tech device that tracks your every move. One that records your speed. One that enables rental car agents to rip off unsuspecting drivers. ... When Turner signed Acme's rental agreement last October, he didn't notice the warning at the top of the contract that read: Vehicles in excess of posted speed limit will be charged $150 fee per occurrence. All our vehicles are GPS equipped. ... When he returned to New Haven on a Sunday night, he drove to an ATM to get some cash and discovered his account was drained. There were three mysterious $150 withdrawals. ... -- Eric Michael Cordian 0+ O:.T:.O:. Mathematical Munitions Division Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law
A Funeral Dirge for Ecash
Nice little piece on Digital Cash by Declan on Wired. http://www.wired.com/news/ebiz/0,1272,44507,00.html Then Declan tries to explain blind signatures. Chaum's method preserved anonymity through a statistical technique. It can be thought of this way: A customer of a virtual bank would create a $1 coin by sending, say, 100 coins with random serial numbers first stuffed into electronic envelopes. The bank randomly would open 99 of the 100 envelopes to verify that the denominations were in fact $1 and the customer wasn't trying to commit fraud. After the bank owner was satisfied that the last remaining envelope was likely to be a $1 denomination too, the bank would sign the envelope -- marking it as digital cash -- and return it unopened. Blinding permits someone to present an encrypted document to someone else for signing. The original owner of the document can calculate the digital signature that would have been created had the plaintext document been signed, from the digital signature on the encrypted document. This allows people to sign things without knowing their content, and prevents the signer from later associating a document with the person who asked that it be signed. In digital cash systems, it permits banknotes to be signed, without the bank seeing the serial numbers on them, so that the bank cannot later recognize them when they are deposited. This is what makes the system anonymous, and prevents anyone from telling who paid for what. What I find somewhat odd, is the protocol suggested here for the bank making sure with a high degree of reliability, that it knows the denomination of an encrypted banknote it is signing. If I follow Declan's argument, should I wish the bank to sign a note for $1, I send the bank 100 such notes each encrypted with a different key. The bank then requests the decryption key for 99 of them, and after verifying that they are in fact $1 notes, has only a 1/100 chance that I've slipped a $1,000,000 note into the pile and they've missed it. So in the DeclanCash system, every 100th dishonest transaction can rip the bank off for $999,999, an average loss for the bank of approximately $10k per dishonest transaction attempted. It would seem far better for the bank to simply sign different denominations with different keys. The bank then need not worry at all about the content of what is signed. if a user pays the bank $100 to sign something that is not in correct banknote format, then the user is out $100 and has the bank's $100 signature attached to something he can't spend. In any case, I can't recall any digital cash systems which tell the bank the amount of the note being signed, by sending lots of notes, and letting the bank look at all but one. So I was wondering if Chaum's patent actually used this metaphor, or if Declan picked up the idea from somewhere else. -- Eric Michael Cordian 0+ O:.T:.O:. Mathematical Munitions Division Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law
Statement from McVeigh's Attorney
Statement of Robert Nigh, attorney, on the occasion of the execution of his client, Timothy McVeigh. - At 7 a.m. this morning, we killed Tim McVeigh, the person responsible for the Oklahoma City bombing. But we did much more than that. We also killed Sergeant McVeigh, the young man who joined the Army because he wanted to serve his country; the young soldier that was so dedicated to his duty that he became the top gunner in this battalion of 100. He was the young man who took up arms on his country's behalf and traveled half-way across the world to meet and engage our enemy. He placed his own life in jeopardy because we asked him to and because he thought it was his duty to do so. His actions were of such character that he was awarded the Bronze Star with designation of valor. But much more importantly than any of that, what we did this morning was to kill Tim McVeigh, friend to Bob Popovic, Allen Smith and Elizabeth McDermott. We killed Bill and Mickey's son this morning. And we killed Jennifer McVeigh's big brother. Of course, we can say that it was Tim himself that caused their pain. And we would be half-right. But it would be a lie to say that we did not double their pain and that we are not responsible, because there is a reasonable way to deal with crime that doesn't involve killing another human being. Although we might not express it in these terms because we know better, we might say that these people are simply collateral damage, but we know too well that there is no such thing as collateral damage. There are only real people with faces and names and loved ones who may never heal because of our actions, and that is true whether their grief was inflicted by Tim McVeigh or by federal law enforcement or by us collectively. To the survivors in Oklahoma City who have had the courage to come out against capital punish in spite of the tremendous pain that they have suffered, I say thank you. To the victims in Oklahoma City, I say that I am sorry that I could not successfully help Tim to express words of reconciliation that he did not perceive to be dishonest. I do not fault them at all for looking forward to this day or for taking some sense of relief from it. But if killing Tim McVeigh does not bring peace or closure to them, I suggest to you that it is our fault. We have told them that we would help them heal their wounds in this way. We have taken it upon ourselves to promise to extract vengeance for them. We have made killing a part of the healing process. In order to do that we use such terms as reasoned moral response, but I submit there's nothing reasonable or moral about what we have done today. That is true when killing a human being even means killing Tim McVeigh. There was a time when we recognized this in our country. In 1972, the Supreme Court of the United States struck down the death penalty as it existed at the time. In its concurring opinion in Furman v. Georgia, Justice Marshall wrote, ''The measure of a country's greatness is its ability to retain compassion in time of crisis. ''This is a country that stands tallest in troubled times; a country that clings to fundamental principles, cherishes its constitutional heritage and rejects simple solutions that compromise the values that lie at the roots of our democratic system. In striking down capital punishment, this court does not malign our system of government; on the contrary, it pays homage to it. In recognizing the humanity of our fellow beings, we pay ourselves the highest tribute. We achieve a major milestone in the long road from barbarism and join the approximately 70 other jurisdictions in the world which celebrate their regard for civilization and humanity by shunning capital punishment.'' There has been a movement in the states to celebrate the dignity of human life and to start a moratorium on executions. It did not come soon enough for Tim McVeigh, but it can come soon enough for others. Where we go from here is a question of critical importance. I have told you, honestly, that Tim cared for people. And some of the people he cared deepest about were his brothers on the federal death row. Even Tim recognized that our claims that we are not racially biased are false. If we believe that, then we ignore the reality that 18 of the 20 men behind me on the federal death row in Terre Haute are persons of color. Fully 90 percent belong to a minority. If we do not acknowledge that, we are lying to ourselves about what we are doing. We are killing the poor and the minority and people that we believe to be different and lesser than ourselves. Even in Tim McVeigh's case, to which the racial disparity doesn't apply, we were incapable of inflicting the death penalty in a fair manner. The FBI could not participate in the prosecution without breaching its obligation to turn over the witness statements. This must make us realize that we are too fallible, we are simply too
Armed Kids Hold Off Cops With Dogs
Cops in Idaho got a big surprise when they attempted to force six young people to leave their rural home, and be placed into state custody. Our Idaho Junior Cypherpunks Academy should receive an extra large subsidy this year. - http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20010530/aponline140217_000.htm SANDPOINT, Idaho -- Six children, believed to be armed, refused to leave their rural home and instead released a pack of dogs on sheriff's deputies who had arrested their mother, authorities said. Deputies retreated from the house after a two-hour standoff Tuesday and were pondering their next move Wednesday. ... -- Eric Michael Cordian 0+ O:.T:.O:. Mathematical Munitions Division Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law
AI: The Movie
http://artifact.psychedelic.net/~emc/ailinks.html There's a new movie by Steven Spielberg, from a project he picked up from the late Stanley Kubrick, which will likely cause a Star Wars like paradigm shift in our way of looking at computer programs and robots. The movie is AI, based somewhat on the short story Super-Toys Last All Summer Long, by Brian Aldiss, and is scheduled for release June 29th. The current public perception of robots and artificial intelligence is largely driven by Asimov's writings on the subject, which pre-dated the notion of mobile agents, the Internet, realistic human simulation on von Neumann platforms, and even such common notions as backup and restore. Asimov's positronic brain as a metaphor of mechanical thought was forever confined to its irridium matrix, and once switched on, plodded on monotonically until it was destroyed. Spielberg's movie will probably change all that, by switching the emphasis from the robot to the AI, a self-rewriting sentient computer program which functions perfectly well without a robot body, perhaps interfaced to a house, an appliance, or an airplane. Of course robot bodies are unbiquitously available when needed, both in mechanical-appearing and human-appearing models. Enter Haley Joel Osment as the 11 year old boy, who's not quite human, adopted by a family who recently lost an organic child, set against a backdrop of a futuristic society dependent on billions of AIs, where various factions, both human and AI, clash over the issue of rights for the sentients. Also fascinating is the extensive Web marketing compaign, in conjunction with Microsoft, featuring around 30 Web sites set in the time of the movie, with names like The Anti-Robot Militia and The Coalition for Robot Freedom. A mystery surrounding the death of one Evan Chan is embedded in the Web content, with a chain of clues and hints leading readers on a quest to solve the mystery. There is also a not-so-subtle resemblence between the laws governing Sentient Private Property in the movie, and the laws governing minors in our society, where they appear very much to be the Sentient Private Property of their parents and guardians. So perhaps the movie will have a consciousness-raising effect in the area of Youth Rights as well. I expect this movie to be a mega-hit, if it is up to Spielberg's usual standards of excellence. Maybe it will kick AI research up a few notches. Of course AI is now a registered trademark of Dreamworks. :/ Enjoy the links. -- Eric Michael Cordian 0+ O:.T:.O:. Mathematical Munitions Division Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law
More Antics by Hostcentric
A small addendum. Hostcentric, unhappy at comments about its threatened unplugging of Phix's web server, unplugged it yesterday. This wasn't even a day after their email threatening to discontinue service to Phix if the SafeHaven web site was not dropped. People thinking of doing business with Hostcentric in the future might want to consider their valuable business records being at the mercy of Hostcentric's constantly varying in its sole discretion policy, plus the fact that they lie. For people who haven't been following this discussion from the beginning, the first message is... http://www.inet-one.com/cypherpunks/current/msg00213.html -- Eric Michael Cordian 0+ O:.T:.O:. Mathematical Munitions Division Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law
Re: CDR: Re: What is truth?
Jim Choate writes: Tim asserts that the falsehood John is a child molester should not be subject to either civil or criminal action. Exactly. The simple act of making that statement in public or private, alone or in a crowd is irrelevant to any action that follows. It therefore can not be held responsbile. The 'speech' can do no harm. Whether he feels the falsehood I have your cat in my microwave or I have your kid should be treated the same way, he has yet to state. And those statements in and of themselves, whether made in jest or intentional malice, should not be punishable. Now if the cat is actually in the microwave then the person who actually PUT them in there should be held accountable. We're examining the case in which the claim is false. This entire perspective also ignores the fact that causing a riot in a theatre is a crime irrespective of mechanism used to cause it. Not only should the person yelling 'Fire' in the theatre be criminaly accountable but the theatre owner and patrons should also have civil recourse. Not for the screaming if Fire, or the waving of a pistol or a penis. Of course, some might argue that this is simply the well-known Heckler's Veto, in which people engage in misbehavior in order to claim it was caused by a speaker whose views they disagree with. If it is a crime to start a theatre riot by yelling Fire!, should it also be a crime to start one by yelling Muhammad's wives are whores or I don't believe in Santa Claus? Pretty soon you'll have people throwing fits on cue. You in effect do not believe that people should be judged for their acts, but also for their fundamental beliefs. As if there were some critical set that was less relative than the other alternatives. Nope. People are free to believe anything they want. Even false things. When they espouse those beliefs, and incite iminent lawless action on the part of others towards some hapless individual, then they should be held accountable. But only if their claims are false, they were either malicious in stating the false claims, or negligent in not knowing the difference, and a reasonable person hearing the claims would likely act in a way which placed himself or other people in danger of serious injury or death. -- Eric Michael Cordian 0+ O:.T:.O:. Mathematical Munitions Division Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law
Re: CDR: Re: SSN Publishing Banned by WA Judge
Jim Choate writes: I've never said any such thing. Don't confuse the issue with a strawman. I didn't say You said it, I said it was a logical and rational reduction of your statements. Simply that your position could be explained in a simpler manner. I re-worded it, I most certainly didn't claim you said a damn thing. Check the meds... Two words, Jim. Mr. Squid Nothing we're talking about here has anything to do with prior restraint. Censorship is prior restraint. And threatening people with 'action' is clearly a pre-meditated strategy to advertise the consequences of flouting it, 'Authority' that is. We're not talking about censorship either. -- Eric Michael Cordian 0+ O:.T:.O:. Mathematical Munitions Division Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law
Re: CDR: Re: SSN Publishing Banned by WA Judge
Jim Choate wrote: Note that at NO time should anyones actual speech be monitored, measured, or otherwise 'managed' by any 3rd party. It simply isn't needed. Oh Bullshit. If Fred has an odd sense of humor, and tells blind people the opposite of what the traffic lights say, his actual speech needs to be managed. If Timmy causes mass death by screaming Anthrax Attack in an underground walkway during rush hour, resulting in a massive stampeding, crushing, and trampling incident, his actual speech needs to be managed. It is equally absurd to suggest that Timmy can mitigate his responsibility by screaming It's my OPINION that we're having an Anthrax Attack in lieu of actually stating there is one. The key points here are that what is being alleged is false, and has a large probability of causing people to react in a way which causes harm, and that the speaker is either aware it is false, or negligent in that he should have been aware it was false. While not all defamatory speech about individuals meets all these criteria, it is clear that some of it does, and being able to only sue the individual tricked into reacting inappropriately, and not the original speaker, would pretty much preclude the recovery of damages. If Alice does this to John on a Website, and perhaps in concert with a virtual community of Alices to others as well, and institutes a child safety program to share her suspicions electronically with LEAs worldwide, then I think John has a very good case that all things belonging to Alice should be made things belonging to John, and Alice should be enjoined from playing with her computer until she learns to behave herself. If it's only 'suspicion' then it's protected speech. Not if Alice shows reckless disregard for the truth, or simply doesn't care. To return to our earlier example, of Disney firing someone, because the neighborhood Womyn's Political Theatre Movement smears them as a child sex predator, for speaking critically of their censorship campaign. You would argue that the irate Womyn are immune from suit, and the guy should sue Disney for firing him. But Disney is an innocent party in all of this, and is under no obligation whatsoever to suffer soiling of its brand name, angry pickets outside its offices, and crank phone calls and bomb threats and Mickey and Donald are Pedos graffiti on its building exterior, for continuing to employ a person falsely smeared as a sexual predator. These things are real to Disney, even if the allegations which caused them aren't. So in this case, I think the defamatory speech is pretty close to the Anthrax Attack example, cited in the prior paragraph, and damages should be able to be recovered. -- Eric Michael Cordian 0+ O:.T:.O:. Mathematical Munitions Division Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law
Re: CDR: Re: SSN Publishing Banned by WA Judge
Tim Writes: That would imply that only criminal and not civil action could be employed when someone is injured or made less wealthy by the actions of another, in the absence of contract, consideration, or concrete property right. Many actions make others less wealthy. When a Borders bookstore opens in town and business suffers dramatically at the smaller bookstores, their owners have certainly been made less wealthy. (I'm not against Borders in any way, but compelling statistical evidence, and even direct causal/eyewitness evidence can be found.) Ditto for price wars. Ditto for when a company switches from buying from Alice to buying from Bob and Alice goes bankrupt. Yes, yes, certainly there are injuries and reductions in wealth which should not form the basis for lawsuits. That does not serve as a proof that civil action should never be permitted, except as part of an existing or implied contract between the parties, or some damage to actual property. [snip] We need to replace silly laws with torts, not the other way around. Competition is not a tort. Economic losses are not torts--unless the economic loss came about through some kind of physical trespass, arson, and related acts of actual aggression. Would There's cyanide in the Tylenol count? How about There's a pedophile in the daycare center? If Alice puts up a sign on her house that says Danger to Children Next Door because John reads Playboy, and Alice thinks Playboy exploits Womyn and Children because she's a Dworkinista, I think John has every right to sue the bitch when he gets fired as a Disney VP, and the sexually frustrated Oprah fans on his block start telling everyone that he's a NAMBLA member. Well, your views are counter to everything I believe. I can't speak for others here, so I won't. But in my view, the above is a crystal clear case of free speech in the First sense, and an equally clear case of where the proper remedy for John is _his own speech_. There are practical cases where the classic notion that the remedy to bad speech is more speech simply doesn't work. An oft-cited example is a parent falsely accused of sex crimes against their children by CPS. This creates the situation where the victim is placed in the position of reiterating the libel in order to state his side of the story, which is often worse than not saying anything, particularly to people who haven't been poisoned by the original tale. If John puts up his own sign saying I'm not a danger to children, now we have two signs, and probably twice as many people seeing at least one of them, who were prior to seeing them, blissfully unaware that John's alleged perversion was a subject of community debate. A story in the local paper with the headline Local Man Denies Being a Danger to Children isn't going to help John either. John is helped only by a reduction in the number of people tainted. Not by unlimited airtime to say - I'm John, and the allegations of baby-sodomy are completely untrue. The notion that some libel is so bad, that it is not capable of being remedied at all by an opposing point of view being presented, used to be a well-understood concept in the courts of this country. In the 1950's, for example, the standard for libel cases was that the person claiming libel had to prove what was said untrue. Only three things were so revolting, according to the moral standards of the time, that the burden of proof was reversed, and damages were automatically awarded unless the libeler was able to prive them true. They were calling someone a Communist, a homosexual, or saying they had a venereal disease. Indeed, we can remember from the McCarthy era, that being smeared as a Communist was not remedied by even an unlimited amount of counter-speech by the person so labeled. Today, we don't care much if people are homosexuals, Communists, or have STDs. The new unremediable libels are child pornography, NAMBLA-supporting, and adults having sex with young kids, and suggestions that someone believes that an individual might support such things, based on their comments about other things. If someone points out that Tim May has 6000 lbs of Ammonium Nitrate and Fuel Oil in his garage, owns a veritable arsenal of guns, and wishes to water his lawn with the blood of Treasury Agents, some might suggest this is a free society at work as well. Of course, Tim might not see the humor when the tanks roll up. :) It's already happened, and I didn't try to sue the person who made the (very similar) claim. Suppose the claim resulted in a raid, and Lon Horiuchi shot your wife. -- Eric Michael Cordian 0+ O:.T:.O:. Mathematical Munitions Division Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law
Re: CDR: Re: SSN Publishing Banned by WA Judge
Tim writes: I make it a point not to respond to people who use the tired chestnut Timmy in their arguments or examples. If it doesn't apply to you... etc. The Timmy in my hypothetical example isn't you any more than Alice, John, or Fred are you. Get over it. When Eric Cordian has stopped using Timmy in this Detweiler fashion, maybe I'll resume replying to him. Is this some sort of breath-holding and turning entertaining shades of purple thing? I assure you my day does not revolve around responses to my Cypherpunks posts from anyone named Tim. Respond, or don't respond. It's all the same to me. -- Eric Michael Cordian 0+ O:.T:.O:. Mathematical Munitions Division Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law
Re: CDR: Re: SSN Publishing Banned by WA Judge
Jim Choate writes: If Fred has an odd sense of humor, and tells blind people the opposite of what the traffic lights say, his actual speech needs to be managed. You don't 'control the speech' you punish the son of a bitch for at least attempted murder. A couple of those and 'odd sense of humor' will be mediated by common sense. That's still controlling Fred's subsequent speech, albeit indirectly. Also, in cases where the damage doesn't rise to the level of attempted murder, it seems to me Tim is saying that no one should be able to file a civil suit against Fred, absent a pre-existing contract with Fred for some service, which Fred has violated. [In deference to he who is easily offended, the imaginary character of Timmy will henceforth be known as Larry.] If Larry causes mass death by screaming Anthrax Attack in an underground walkway during rush hour, resulting in a massive stampeding, crushing, and trampling incident, his actual speech needs to be managed. No, the consequence, breaking the peace, needs to be punished. So you're not against civil suits like Tim is, you're only against prior restraint. That I have no problem with. -- Eric Michael Cordian 0+ O:.T:.O:. Mathematical Munitions Division Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law
Ashcroft Postpones McVeigh Execution
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Attorney General John Ashcroft postponed next week's execution of convicted Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh until June 11 and ordered an investigation into the FBI's failure to turn over thousands of documents to McVeigh's defense team. This looks like the government doesn't like the way McVeigh's story is presently being spun, and wishes to break the momentum. The government is also demonstrating once and for all, that *it*, and not McVeigh, is in complete control of all aspects of McVeigh's killing. A good concrete example of the fact that only 2% of propaganda is lying, and the other 98% is careful control of the context and timing under which the truth gets released. -- Eric Michael Cordian 0+ O:.T:.O:. Mathematical Munitions Division Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law
Re: What is truth?
Jim Choate opines: Extortion is theft by threat. The fact that it is done via speech or not is irrelevant. It is the use of force that makes this a crime, not the mechanism of that force. I have your kid and if you don't put $50,000 in a brown paper bag, I'm sending you an ear. Before we descend completely into Choatian Philosophy here, permit me to remind you that the topic under discussion is Tim's assertion that most falsehoods should not be actionable. Tim asserts that the falsehood John is a child molester should not be subject to either civil or criminal action. Whether he feels the falsehood I have your cat in my microwave or I have your kid should be treated the same way, he has yet to state. In any case, if we are going to protect speech which constitutes irremediable libel against John, likely to incite iminent lawless action against John by the mob, and interfere with John's ability to pursue life, liberty, and happiness in the future, protecting speech designed to extort seems a small additional leap. After all, according to Tim, pure speech can't hurt anyone, or at least, the kind of hurt it produces should not allow anyone to be dragged into court. -- Eric Michael Cordian 0+ O:.T:.O:. Mathematical Munitions Division Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law
Re: SSN Publishing Banned by WA Judge
Jim Choate Writes: - Each individual should show no self control over their speech, they should in fact blabber whatever comes into their heads in a continous stream of noise. Otherwise it's 'censorship' because somebody might find the silence offensive I've never said any such thing. What I've said, and what Tim and others have argued against, is that false speech which willfully and maliciously seeks to harm another should be actionable in a court of law. There is no First Amendment right to be free of the negative consequences of falsely accusing someone of a crime because you disagree with their views, nor is there any First Amendment right to trick someone into leaping in front of a speeding car. There is an additional problem with your position. If I am not to be trusted to manage my own speech in all cases, what makes this supposed angelic censor so reliable? Oh please, manage your speech all you want. Just don't be surprised if I send you a bill for the amount by which your false and malicious speech reduces my Net Worth, or incites damage to my person. Nothing we're talking about here has anything to do with prior restraint. -- Eric Michael Cordian 0+ O:.T:.O:. Mathematical Munitions Division Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law
Re: SSN Publishing Banned by WA Judge
John Young reports: The judge ruled that publication of the names and addresses of the cops and their families is protected by the First Amendment. I'm really torn on this. As you no doubt know, there are numerous Network Vigilantes who would publish my personal information instantly if they could get their hands on it, with the intent of inciting harrassment, illegal acts, and intimidating me into not exercising my First Amendment right to laugh loudly at the Right Wing Sex and Censorship Nazis. Of course I can sue. But that's a giant waste of my time, and unless I sustain at least five figure damages as a result of their actions, it's not really worth picking up the phone to call the lawyer. The Internet has really changed the arena of dissemination of personal information. First, it takes a trivial amount of effort to instantly publish personal information to everyone in the world, along with unsubstiantiated anonymous allegations about someone's character, in a medium where the world's worst crackpot may have a Web page indistinguishable in quality from that of the New York Times, and just as likely to pop up on a Web search. Second, the long held notion that the government may not maintain files on how citizens choose to exercise their Constitutional rights, unless the files are part of a legitimate criminal investigation, is being made a mockery of when vigilante pressure groups offer LEAs electronic access to their databases of anonymous accusations, half-truths, wishful thinking, and personal information. Since the LEAs are not maintaining these files on citizens themselves, no laws are violated. When everything gets linked up, any flatfoot in any jerkwater town will be able to look at the Echols database, the CPAC database, the PETA database, the Eco-Terrorist Database, or any of many other sources of information from the comfort of his copcar terminal, to see who the bored housewives and self-loathing homosexuals of the world have this week accused of molesting children, kicking dogs, cutting giant redwoods, or not accepting Jesus Christ as their personal savior. So what we really have evolved here is the Soviet-style virtual neighborhood, with the nosey woman on every block, reporting back to the higher-ups in the Party on everyones political leanings and loyalty, to be added to their Party files, implemented in a distributed fashion via IP. This aspect of the Net has now overwhelmed the Worldwide Conversation on every conceivable topic which the Net originally enabled. I know few people today who would take a politically incorrect position on any controversial topic from a real name account, lest the Virtual Vigilantes and other do-gooders of the world decide to screw with them, their families, their jobs, their landlords, and their bank accounts. With the Christian Coalition living at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue now, you can bet a lot of these pressure groups are going to get mainstreamed, and people like Ashcroft are going to happily do business with them to identify the heretical and unsaved for Special Processing. I really don't want to see a world with no First Amendment, nor one in which nothing controversial can be said without going through a big chain of anonymous remailers. It will be interesting to see how and if technology solves this problem of everything people say being said to everyone in the world, and being available forever for everyone in the world to refer to, even as political context and what people find acceptable undergoes radical change. Let a thousand poppies bloom today. --Mao -- Eric Michael Cordian 0+ O:.T:.O:. Mathematical Munitions Division Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law
The Muzzling of Tim McVeigh
The government is being real careful not to let Tim McVeigh have a forum to speak prior to his closed-circuit murder on May 16th. They have forbiddden any televised interviews, and the lap dogs in the US press are being very careful to not quote verbatim a single word McVeigh has said, instead relying on editorial pieces disguised as news, in which topics like McVeigh's remorse and his use of the term collateral damage are spun to exacting federal standards. Fortunately, McVeigh wrote down his reasons for the OK bombing, and mailed them to a friend. This friend kept them secret, until McVeigh directed a UK journalist to contact the friend, in order that the material could be released. So, while the press in the Country That Never Apologizes continues its anti-McVeigh ranting, readers in Britain are getting the facts of the case directly from McVeigh. In McVeigh's Own Words: I explain herein why I bombed the Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City. I explain this not for publicity, nor seeking to win an argument of right or wrong. I explain so that the record is clear as to my thinking and motivations in bombing a government installation. I chose to bomb a federal building because such an action served more purposes than other options. Foremost the bombing was a retaliatory strike; a counter attack for the cumulative raids (and subsequent violence and damage) that federal agents had participated in over the preceding years (including, but not limited to, Waco). From the formation of such units as the FBI's Hostage Rescue and other assault teams amongst federal agencies during the 80s, culminating in the Waco incident, federal actions grew increasingly militaristic and violent, to the point where at Waco, our government - like the Chinese - was deploying tanks against its own citizens. Knowledge of these multiple and ever-more aggressive raids across the country constituted an identifiable pattern of conduct within and by the federal government and amongst its various agencies. For all intents and purposes, federal agents had become soldiers (using military training, tactics, techniques, equipment, language, dress, organisation and mindset) and they were escalating their behaviour. Therefore this bombing was meant as a pre-emptive (or pro-active) strike against these forces and their command and control centres within the federal building. When an aggressor force continually launches attacks from a particular base of operations, it is sound military strategy to take the fight to the enemy. Additionally, borrowing a page from US foreign policy, I decided to send a message to a government that was becoming increasingly hostile, by bombing a government building and the government employees within that building who represent that government. Bombing the Murrah federal building was morally and strategically equivalent to the US hitting a government building in Serbia, Iraq, or other nations. Based on observations of the policies of my own government, I viewed this action as an acceptable option. From this perspective, what occurred in Oklahoma City was no different than what Americans rain on the heads of others all the time, and subsequently, my mindset was and is one of clinical detachment. (The bombing of the Murrah building was not personal, no more than when Air Force, Army, Navy or Marine personnel bomb or launch cruise missiles against government installations and their personnel). I hope that this clarification amply addresses all questions. McVeigh also comments on Feds thinking the law doesn't apply to them: When the post-inferno investigations and inquiries by the Executive and Legislative branches of government concluded that the federal government had done nothing fundamentally wrong during the raid of the Branch Davadians at Waco, the system not only failed the victims who died during that siege but also failed the citizens of this country This failure in effect left the door open for more Wacos. Some time after the fact they received awards, bonus pay and in some cases promotions for their disgusting and inhumane actions at Waco and Ruby Ridge. This was exemplified years later while I sat in prison, The Ruby Ridge FBI sniper, Lon Horiuchi, was charged by the state of Idaho for his actions. The federal courts threw out the charges, ruling that federal agents are immune from the laws that govern the common citizen. The surviving Davidians were sentenced to lengthy prison terms, despite protests from the trial jurors. The primary 'checks and balances' system had again failed to
Kill Babies, Get a Medal and a Senate Seat
Eyewitnesses report former Nebraska Senator Bob Kerry rounded up unarmed women and children in Vietnam, and ordered his troops to open fire. Does Sentator Kerry deserve Lethal Injection too? Perhaps on Pay Per View with the proceeds going to the surviving relatives of his victims. - NEW YORK (AP) -- Former Nebraska Sen. Bob Kerrey says he is ashamed that as a Navy SEAL he led a 1969 combat mission during which unarmed Vietnamese women and children were killed. Though a member of Kerrey's SEAL unit and a Vietnamese woman who said she witnessed the killings allege the civilians were herded together and massacred, the former Nebraska governor maintains the raid was by and large carried out in self-defense. ''To describe it as an atrocity, I would say, is pretty close to being right, because that's how it felt and that's why I feel guilt and shame for it,'' Kerrey said, according to a partial transcript of a ''60 Minutes II'' segment scheduled for broadcast Tuesday. Kerrey was later awarded a Bronze Star for the Feb. 25, 1969, raid in the Mekong Delta. The citation says 21 Viet Cong were killed and enemy weapons were captured or destroyed. Kerrey's squad, in reporting to military superiors, didn't mention killing civilians. Witness' and official accounts of the number of dead varies from 13 to more than 20. ''We herded them together in a group. We lined them up and we opened fire,'' Gerhard Klann told ''60 Minutes II.'' Kerrey, who has not ruled out a run for president in 2004, said he is haunted by the 32-year-old memory of the raid. [Gee, he didn't look too haunted before the press found out about it, did he?] ''I have lived with this privately for 32 years,'' Kerrey told the Omaha World-Herald in an interview published Wednesday. ''I can't keep it private any more. My conscience tells me some good should come from this.'' Neither Kerrey nor Klann returned calls Wednesday from The Associated Press. Kerrey, who earned the nation's highest valor award, the Medal of Honor, for a later SEAL action, talked about the raid publicly for the first time last week in a speech to ROTC students at Virginia Military Institute in Lexington, Va. Kerrey said the mission took place on a moonless night, when he was a 25-year-old lieutenant leading a seven-man commando team. He said Klann and another one of his men killed several people they came upon at the start of the raid because they believed they were a threat. Kerrey said he had not ordered the killings but took responsibility for them. About 15 minutes later, Kerrey said, shots were fired at his squad and his men returned fire. ''But when the fire stopped, we found that we had killed only women, children and older men. It was not a military victory. It was a tragedy and I had ordered it,'' said Kerrey, who has since said he counted about 14 bodies. Klann's version of the shooting, and an account from Pham Tri Lanh, who said she saw the raid, were reported as part of a joint effort by CBS News and The New York Times. The Times will publish the story in its Sunday magazine and posted it on its Web site Wednesday. Klann said that at the start of the raid he killed an old man with Kerrey's help and that he does not remember anyone shooting at their team. Instead, he said the commandos assembled about 15 villagers for questioning and that Kerrey ordered the men to open fire. Lanh, then the 30-year-old wife of a Viet Cong soldier, said she witnessed the shooting. ''They shot these two old women and they fell forward and they rolled over and then they ordered everybody out from the bunker and they lined them up and they shot all of them from behind,'' Lanh told CBS News. Mike Ambrose, a third member of the commando team, ''wholeheartedly'' denied rounding up villagers and shooting them. Ambrose, like Kerrey, said he remembered the unit being fired on. ''It got ridiculous pretty much once the guns got going. I was in survival mode. It was dark, you're not seeing much but movement and shadows. You couldn't tell if they were women or men,'' Ambrose told the Times magazine. The four remaining members of Kerrey's team declined to comment. Kerrey said his memory may differ from the rest of the team due to the passing years and the fog of war. ''Gerhard I will not contradict,'' Kerrey said. ''So if that's his view I don't contradict it. It's not my memory of it and as to the eyewitness (she) is, at the very least, sympathetic to the Viet Cong.'' Kerrey, a Democrat, served one term as governor of Nebraska and two terms as senator. He recently became president of New School University in New York. He told the magazine he wasn't afraid to accept his responsibility for the incident and is under no illusions about the repercussions. ''It's going to be very interesting to see the reaction to the story,'' Kerrey said. ''I mean, because basically you're talking about a man who killed
Timothy McVeigh
Well, now that the government's Pay Per View killing of Timothy McVeigh is less than a month away, the disinformation campaign seems to be ramping up in order to self-servingly spin his crime. Witness the following pious piece of crap making the Email route around the Net. Comments in [] are mine. From OKC Fireman I hope that Tuesday when Tim McVeighs Book hits the newsstands, that NO ONE WILL BUY THIS BOOK. [Perhaps we should make "intentionally looking" at the book a crime.] This man is being given too much publicity and shows NO REMORSE for the horrible crime that he committed. [All the publicity I've seen is from anti-McVeigh folk unhappy that the Sheeple need additional nips at their heels to "Baa" convincingly and in unison. I keep thinking of bomber pilot who fired a two-thousand pound concrete and steel piercing munition into an air raid shelter full of civilians, including children, in Iraq. When's the last time you heard anything about his "REMORSE" on the tube?] He has admitted he is guilty. [Yes, Tim McVeigh, a veteran of the Persial Gulf War, which killed a hundred thousand people during the war, and a million and a half afterwards by wrecking the Iraqi economy, returned home to the US, and judged the US Government's behavior at Waco by the same standards he had been taught to use against the Iraqis. Hey, it's not our fault the government didn't deprogram their killer before returning him to civilian life, and he still had a conscience left. You better put some ice on that, Oklahoma.] He refers to the precious 19 children he murdered as "collateral Damage" and his only regret is that "their deaths proved to be a public relations nightmare that undercut his cause" ... OF ALL THE GALL [Seems to be that "collateral damage" has always the government's favorite term for all the civilians that got blown up, napalmed, shot, and otherwise met a sticky end because we were targeting something nearby and they were in the way. I don't recall anyone saying "OF ALL THE GALL" when the Pentagon spokesperson joked about the unlucky civilians who just happened to be crossing the bridge when we blew it up. Of course, they doctored the video by running it faster to make it look like there was no time to make any other decision. Clever, these spokes-weasels. Perhaps the term "collateral damage" will now be retired because of its association with Tim McVeigh. Perhaps the government could hold a jingle-writing contest to coin a new term for humans in the way when America, the country that never apologizes, chooses to send a political message with bombs and tanks. Of course, if the 19 kids had been in an Iraqi government building, we would be referring to them by the politically correct terminology - "Human Shields."] The Pictures of these children and the adults will always be in our minds... [The advantage of being able to give the victims unlimited airtime to gripe over their loss. When's the last time you saw a 1-hour special of the Waco Victims' favorite family videos? No firemen holding dead babies for the cameras there. Hey, did we ever rebuild all those neighborhoods we flattened in Panama?] 168 innocent people died that day. This man murdered them ... please do not make him some sort of hero ..He wants part of the proceeds to go to the Oklahoma City Memorial ... [How innocent are civilians, really? They pay their taxes. They buy the bombs. Sometimes, as happened recently in the Zionist Entity, they elect a mass-murdering war criminal as their leader in an overwhelming landslide. The notion of not attacking civilian populations is really a very recent invention. Convenient, at the present time, for the US to bray mightily over.] the OKC MEMORIAL Declines the money.. Send the Money to the Memorial .. but PLEASE DO NOT BUY THIS BOOK!! Thank you and remember the precious children. so innocent [Well, precious when it is convenient for their charred bodies to be featured in a photo opportunity, for political purposes. Sentient property for most other functions they are made to perform.] Please pass this on to everyone you know, so this monster does not get any more publicity, that is all he wants is the publicity. [Oh, I don't believe for an instant Tim McVeigh blew up the Murrah building because he wanted to become famous. It was a calculated political act, for which he expected to sacrifice his life, in order to create "consequences of significance" for the government, for its behavior at Waco, Ruby Ridge, and numerous other places. We may disagree with what he did, but let's not play propaganda games by trying to trivialize and belittle his actions, and portray them as some attempt at shameless self-promotion.] Paul Hinchey, Captain Guymon Fire Dept. Guymon, OK Thank-you, Paul. You may go and polish the fire truck now. George Orwell once characterized the future as a
Re: Plan C from Cyberspace
Tim May Wrote: Yep, all obvious stuff. ... Time for Plan C. Obvious too that if Jim Bell were a nym, there would be no one to send to prison. Now that the standard for sending someone away for five years is nothing more than a statement by some jackbooted thug that they feel "harrassed," and today's exercise of ones Constitutional Rights is tomorrow's evidence for the prosecution, anonymity just became a whole lot more important. Amerika has finally reached the favorite plateau of police states mascarading as democracies, that of having enough vague and ambiguous laws to make everyone guilty of something, with jury Sheeple being viscerally incapable of taking a citizen's side against the government. I am reminded of the old law school demonstration of having a black student, and a white student holding a banana, run into a classroom, briefly struggle, and run out. When asked what they saw, students will swear the banana was a gun, that the black guy was the one holding it, that the black guy attacked the white guy, and make numerous other attempts to forcefit the brief flashes of what they saw into the world view fed them by the media and the public school system. When shown a drawing of a uniformed cop subduing an ordinary-appearing citizen, even a six year old will describe it as "the policeman fighting with the 'bad guy.'" When the state holds up four fingers, and asks the Sheeple what they see, the Sheeple truly see five fingers. The Sheeple realize how fruitless it is to resist. The Sheeple look forward to the bullet. The Sheeple not only obey Big Brother, they LOVE Big Brother too. "Proles and animals are free." -- Eric Michael Cordian 0+ O:.T:.O:. Mathematical Munitions Division "Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law"
Re: CDR: How do we expect to even find them, when they're using mixmasters to
Norm writes: Can a suspected pedophile claim that a virus downloaded the porn without him knowing? Preposterous? But can a cop or a lawyer explain why the defense is preposterous? Prior to the mainstreaming of Jesus Freaks and Victimology, I recall that a study estimated the total number of genuine pedophiles, (those fitting the DSM description), in the US and Europe combined to be around 15,000. This is why the commercial child porn market folded of its own accord, before the Meeslings decided that child porn could be made into the one political issue no one could risk opposing. What these dodos fail to realize, is that while only genuine pedophiles will pay big bucks for child porn, large numbers of relatively ordinary people will view free child porn, if they can do so without government threats. Biology has dictated, after all, that men are generally attracted to the youngest, healthiest-looking fertile females, and the arbitrary age of majority set by society is several years beyond this. If anyone thinks the dissemination and viewing of zero-cost child porn made possible by digital photography and the Internet involves only "pedophiles", each of whom is slowing working their way up to victim number 300, they need to unplug the Sex Abuse Agenda from their sphincter, and grab a clue. The criminalization of "intentionally listening," and "intentionally looking," will ultimately end up being applied to lots of things that don't involve depictions of horny adolescents. People trapped in the rhetoric of the Sex Abuse Agenda are greasing the skids for the New Police State, unaware that the doctrine they are following was fabricated from whole cloth by Antisexualists, Radical Feminists, Bible Thumpers, and those opposed to Youth Rights, and has no basis in scientific fact. The First Amendment should give adults the right to communicate amongst themselves on any topic of their choosing, including through the use of visual material. How easily we toss this fundamental concept because the Abused Womens' Whining Contingent transmogrifies any possibility of non-problematical sexual activity on the part of minors into a statement that they bear responsibility for their own abuse. -- Eric Michael Cordian 0+ O:.T:.O:. Mathematical Munitions Division "Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law"
Re: CDR: TannerWatch: Jack don't need no body language
Norm Deplume wrote: Law And Justice by Irv Benzion ... You are probably unaware as was I that it is illegal to criticize a federal judge or his/her actions or to cause "disrespect" to the federal court system. A federal judge may if in his/her opinion such an occurrence arises, issue a warrant, have you arrested and send you to jail without trial, appeal or parole. A citizen of this country may criticize the President Of The United States but not a federal court judge. Former Alabama Governor George Wallace once commented that America is run by "thugs and federal judges." I'd like to see a cite for what law makes it "illegal" to criticize a federal judge. It was my understanding that pretty much all judges have the power to have citizens dragged before them, to cite for contempt, and to jail indefinitely without bail, without having to justify it to anyone. I've always regarded this as a major loophole in our "nation of laws," namely that a judge can order you to do anything, and jail you if you refuse. That and Grand Juries, which are unaccountable to anyone, and serve only as tools of harrassment and intimidation, and rubber stamps for prosecutors. -- Eric Michael Cordian 0+ O:.T:.O:. Mathematical Munitions Division "Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law"
The Deconstruction of James Dalton Bell
Ah, I see Declan has posted his impressions of Day 5 on Wired News. http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,42951,00.html Jim Bell's Strange Day in Court by Declan McCullagh Bell's lawyer, Robert Leen, twice asked U.S. District Judge Jack Tanner to halt the proceedings because his client had a "major mental disorder." Gosh, don't you just love how federal public defenders "help" their clients, by calling them crazy in front of the jury. Reminds me of all those patronizing press conferences given by Tim McVeigh's lawyer during the trial, in which he coyly explained that even human refuse like McVeigh deserved the rubber stamp of due process, all the while holding his nose, and acting like it pained him greatly to even be near the guy. Until Leen gets his MD, and Bell is his patient, he's not qualified to diagnose anyone. He said that his attorney "communicated a threat" against Bell and Bell's family during the meeting, and "threatened to cut me off after 30 minutes if I mentioned" accusations against fellow prisoners. One wonders why the article describes Bell as "Agitated," "Embittered," and "Combative," rather than by a more value-neutral term like "Angry," unless the reporter is also playing the diagnosis game here. During cross-examination, Bell invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination when asked about $2,000 a month in trust fund income not reported on a statement that he signed in November 2000 to qualify for a court-appointed lawyer. Why was this line of questioning even permitted? It is a meta-issue, has nothing to do with the charges, and seems only a shameless attempt to further poison the jury. The Vancouver, Washington resident said he was coerced into taking a plea agreement on July 18, 1997, in which he admitted to obstructing IRS agents, writing "Assassination Politics" and stink-bombing the carpet outside an IRS office. It would seem to me that since writing "Assassination Politics" was not illegal, it should not be mischaracterized as a crime confessed to on a plea agreement. The press does this all the time of course, reporting that defendants "admitted" things in their plea agreements, which were not the subject of any criminal charges, thus juxtiposing certain acts and illegality in the mind of the reader. Statements of fact in a plea agreement which are only background should not be deliberately confused with the crimes being confessed to. Would we say Bell "admitted" to having a chemistry diploma, or "admitted" to living at a certain address? I think not. London suggested that there were two types of U.S. citizens: Those who were federal agents and those who are not. Some animals are more equal than others, I guess. Because Bell repeatedly said he would not violate the law, Leen had hoped to raise a First Amendment defense -- essentially saying that because the law protects advocacy of violent acts, the jury can find Bell to be not guilty as charged. Of course, the point that is missed here is that "Assassination Politics" and Bell's attempt to document federal harrassment of him after his release, are two completely unrelated things. This is a big trend in prosecutions these days, so much so that if one is outspoken in ones beliefs, one cannot commit any acts that seem to support those beliefs, and vice versa. Someone who advocates government overthrow and plays paintball on the weekends, is looking at a long prison sentence. It is safe to do either, but not both. The "threats" and "acts in support of the threats" can be completely unrelated, and the government will still win the case. Leen asked the judge to incorporate a First Amendment defense in instructions to the jury. But Tanner nixed that idea. He said he did not believe Bell was engaged in political speech. H. Is it "Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of political speech...?" Obviously Judge Tanner has a different version of the US Constitution than I do. Bell has complained that the media was "boycotting" his trial. Well, at least what media is not manufacturing consent for his conviction is boycotting his trial. -- Eric Michael Cordian 0+ O:.T:.O:. Mathematical Munitions Division "Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law"
Re: CDR: RE: Screwing Jim Bell and Cypherpunks
Tim May Wrote: I think the Bell case indicates the need for Cypherpunks to start writing code again, and stop engaging in meatspace theatrics. First, Bell's actions are not the actions of most members of this mailing list. Frankly, this is a logical error: referring to "Cypherpunks" as a collective entity and then imputing the views or actions of a few to be the views or actions of the collective entity. The government does this routinely. Well, I never use "Cypherpunks" to mean anything other than "those presently subscribed to the list." It's just shorter to type. It's much like saying that some.newsgroup needs to stop gratuitous crossposting. It is not implied by that statement that some.newsgroup is a collective entity defined by anything more than readership, or that everyone in some.newsgroup is engaging in the problematical behavior. Second, talk to Phil Z. and Kelly G. about their legal issues for several years, as the government sought to prosecute one or both of them for violations of the ITARs (and maybe more). True, neither was ultimately charged. Their legal bills were substantial, however, and they could have face prison time and massive fines. Whatever people do in the way of writing code, doing it as near to untraceably as possible would seem to be the way to go. Fine, change the motto to "Cypherpunks anonymously write code." -- Eric Michael Cordian 0+ O:.T:.O:. Mathematical Munitions Division "Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law"
Re: Tanner article (nicely formatted for you sensitive lads)
Norm Writes: The Judge in the case was a Carter appointee who came out of retirement just to hear Als case. Judge Tanners behavior in the trial created a court transcript that can only be described as Kafkaesque. There is not a single page that does not reflect judicial abuse and misconduct. Obviously this is a new definition of "nicely formatted," with which I was previously unfamiliar. -- Eric Michael Cordian 0+ O:.T:.O:. Mathematical Munitions Division "Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law"
Cypherpunks Web Archive
Does anyone know why the Cypherpunks archive at www.inet-one.com/cypherpunks/ has been down for over a day now? If it's just a DNS problem, could someone post a numeric IP. Thanks. -- Eric Michael Cordian 0+ O:.T:.O:. Mathematical Munitions Division "Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law"
Re: Save Me From the Child Sex Predators
Anonymous writes: Note that everyone who has ever disagreed with Mr. Echols is by definition a "child sex predator and child pornographer" and winds up having any personal information Mr. Echols can scrape up on them placed on Mr. Echols Web site of "child sex predators and child pornographers." Ah yes, good ol' Mike Echols. A person so low that even rabble-rousers like Ms. Anne Cox of CPAC refuse to mention his name without spitting. The feds are very happy that Echols is in business, of course, as long as he continues to direct his harrassment efforts at people critical of the governments anti-porn and censorship agenda. They'll do anything to help him, particularly through quasi-governmental organizations like NCMEC, as long as they keep their plausible deniability intact should he go too far. A pest with friends in high places, one might say. Any animosity directed at Mr. Echols by individuals thus libeled merely serves to reinforce Mr. Echols' delusions that he is continuously under attack by "child sex predators and child pornographers" for his fabulous work in protecting children from "child sex predators and child pornographers." To a hammer, everything looks like a nail. To a "child-saver," everything looks like a pedophile. One day, not so long ago, I flamed some member of the frothing radical feminist man-haters contingent, who wanted to shred the Constitution, and the next day, I was rewarded with my own entry on Echol's page, inviting people to mail in my personal information so it could be posted. Later, I engaged arch-kook Noreen Gosch on a CNN IRC server, from a shell box in Salt Lake City, and Echols happily added "Lives in Salt Lake City" to my entry. Noreen is a fine woman who thinks that the International Pedophile Conspiracy is run under the CIA's MK-ULTRA program, and uses Satanic Ritual Abuse to produce multiple personalities in their secret child operatives. Of course, it's all run by Michael Aquino, who has had his own problems with the Echols and Goschs of the world. The Animal Emancipations folks have a very amusing Echols web page of their own, with audio files of threats he left on their answering machines. Yes, Echols not only does pedophiles, he does animal rights activists too. From a Cypherpunkish point of view, I suppose we should mirror Echols all over the place, and build him his own Eternity Server, should the BoyChat folks succeed in making him ISPless. From a practical point of view, Echols is likely to become a lot more dangerous, now that we have Ashcroft in office, and the government is about to embark on another Ed Meese-style "porn causes all crime" campaign with the help of its conservative fellow travellers. It would be highly amusing if he managed to mainstream himself, and by the second Shrub term, had gotten himself installed as our nations first Pedophile Czar. -- Eric Michael Cordian 0+ O:.T:.O:. Mathematical Munitions Division "Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law"
Encouraging Terrorists is Legal
A US Federal Appeals Court has tossed out the $109 million verdict against anti-abortion activists who ran a website called "The Nuremberg Files", which listed the personal information of abortion doctors, and cheered whenever one of them was killed. The Judge opined that as long as the defendants didn't threaten to commit violent acts, working alone or with others, that their conduct constituted protected First Amendment Free Speech. Specifically, speech which only "encourages unrelated terrorists" is First Amendment protected. Now what was it Jim Bell threatened to do with those pigfucker names and addresses again? -- Eric Michael Cordian 0+ O:.T:.O:. Mathematical Munitions Division "Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law"
Re: shithead federal public defenders
Blank Frank wrote: McVeigh's Former Attorney Willing to Testify Against Nichols This was the guy who acted like he was on the prosecution payroll all during the trial, right? -- Eric Michael Cordian 0+ O:.T:.O:. Mathematical Munitions Division "Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law"
Junior AP
The AP is reporting that the three year old son of a police officer, in Clarkesdale, Mississippi, climbed into the back seat of the family truck while his off-duty father stopped for gas, picked up dad's pistol, aimed it at the gas station attendant, and shot him in the face. The attendant, an unfortunate James Collins, 43, is in critical condition. Remember, guns don't kill people, toddlers do. -- Eric Michael Cordian 0+ O:.T:.O:. Mathematical Munitions Division "Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law"
The Privatization of Blacklists
One of the more fascinating aspects of the Internet is the ability of small groups of motivated individuals to create the types of privacy intrusions that used to be the exclusive domain of governments, law enforcement, and credit bureaus. Gone are the early days when the Net was solely government, business, and educational users, and people spouted their opinions on abortion, gun control, child porn, and drug dealing under their real names, and proudly signed them with their corporate logos. On today's Net, saying anything too controversial, that gores the ox of even a small group of zealots, is enough to get you on a list on someone's Web site, and letters written trying to terminate your housing, employment, and social life, by people pretending to be "concerned citizens." Such "Virtual Communities" of axe-grinders can form almost instantaneously, from disparate bored housewives and wannabe vigilantes, and wield collective power that used to be reserved to the powerful and well-organized. Woe be it to him who publicly offends cat-lovers, rabid feminists, smokers, or Scientologists, and lets his IP be traced. Indeed, as the Surveilance State approaches, it is apparent that most of its tentacles are corporate, not government, with citizen units trading privacy for convenience in droves. Enter RepCheck, an amusing Internet startup created back in December, and acting as a clearing house of gossip and other information on private individuals. http://www.repcheck.com/ RepCheck is a simple idea. RepCheck is free. RepCheck is a database of individuals' reputations, which anyone may add to or access. Employers, landlords, prospective business partners, and others, may check the social and business dealings of anyone through the site, and anyone may leave information on anyone else when the site is visited. You must join to access the database, and in doing so, you agree to a Terms of Service which says that you recognize that RepCheck is merely a distributor of information provided by Third Parties, and has no responsibility for any content, and that should you ever have a legal dispute with the site, you agree to resolve it by binding arbitration. You are also invited to give RepCheck the email addresses of several dozen of your closest friends, so they can say nice things about you, and in order to prevent "Identity Theft", RepCheck wants a working credit card number and expiration date, which "they promise never to charge to." (I vaguely remember some porn sites doing this for age verification and then billing tens of millions of dollars in bogus charges a while ago, BTW.) So all you have to do to defend your reputation, is send all your friends to the site, credit card numbers in hand, and recurse this process with your friends' friends, your friends' friends' friends, an arbitrary number of levels deep. Kind of like Make Money Fast with credit card numbers and Reputation Capital, instead of email messages and $5. :) And, like most such pyramid schemes, the lemings pile on in droves. A leading computer magazine reports that within 2 weeks of opening its servers, RepCheck had garnered 25,000 happy users, and presumedly a working credit card number from each. (Which they promise never to bill to, of course.) The US Government is prohibited from warehousing information on how individual citizens exercise their First Amendment rights, except as part of a legitimate criminal investigation. Credit bureaus only disseminate to their subscribers, and don't contain unedited comments on what your neighbors think of you. Police files are generally not public knowlege until you are arrested and convicted of something. There are no such restrictions on how private individuals or companies accumulate or distribute non-credit information, however. No requirements on what can be said. No procedures for correcting erroneous information. No laws that unverifiable information must be removed. No laws that say how your landlord or employer can use such information. Big Brother can certainly use RepCheck too, when looking for individuals having non-mainstream political or sexual views. Even individuals the government would have no legal right to keep files on. Individuals who have broken no laws, and don't hang out with people who do. Is RepCheck the wave of the future, when everyones skeletons in the closet, as recited by their neighbors and business associates, are no more than a mouse click away from everyone else on the planet? Anonymity just became a whole lot more important. -- Eric Michael Cordian 0+ O:.T:.O:. Mathematical Munitions Division "Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law"
Re: Consensus? We don't need no stinkin' consensus...
An anonymous twit writes: Anger expressed by commission is usually justified by laudable motives, e.g. concern for the well-being of the victim. The expression of the anger is dictated by the desire to wound while concealing the intention to wound -- even the existence of the anger. This is not to spare the feelings of the victim but to wound them more effectively. The intent is to provoke counteranger with such subtlety that the victim blames himself and believes his anger is not justified. That way, people with PAPD can assume the role of innocent victim (Kantor, 1992, pp. 178-180). They may make directly hostile statements because they fail to perceive their own motivating attitude, perceive their hostility too late, or believe that their attitude can be concealed. Can't we do without Victimologist prattle on a cryptography and privacy list? Shrinks should be next after all the lawyers are fed to the lions. "Medicalizing" your opponent's argument, instead of responding to it, is a tactic of police states, religious nuts, controlling relatives, and idiots. Which one are you? -- Eric Michael Cordian 0+ O:.T:.O:. Mathematical Munitions Division "Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law"
Robb Joins the Cypherpunks
Robb London writes: Attorney General Ashcroft personally approved your subpoena, and that of another reporter who published admissions by James Dalton Bell. I'm sure he did. The Government is not seeking any source material, notes, or other unpublished material from you by virtue of this subpoena. The limited purpose of the subpo ena is to have you review two of your published articles, acknowledge your auth orship, review several of the statements which you attributed to Bell in your a rticles, and have you verify that he in fact told you those things. What's always struck me as odd is that Declan, who I have said previously seems to be spending far too much time eating at the King's table these days, seems to delight in publishing outrageous self-incriminating quotes from Bell, in lieu of any factual discussion of the issues raised by the case. I guess Declan must feel that as long as it's James Dalton Bell, and his elderly parents, who are the only likely victims of the anal plungering such comments engender, that it's great journalistic fun to put "Cypherpunk Terrorist Vows Revenge" articles at the top of Wired News to celebrate Bell's release from coercive mistreatment at the hands of the state apparatus. It is hardly surprising that these ill-chosen quotations resulted in a subpoena, so that they may be presented as evidence of motive as the government fabricates yet another laundry list of charges to hurl at Mr. Bell, in its neverending quest to manufacture terrorists to frighten the public with. As I've also said in the past, absent the government's persecution of Mr. Bell, AP would have been discussed briefly, like numerous other things on the Cypherphnks list, and quickly forgotten. The points Declan leaves out of his articles, and which I think are the more germain ones, I listed briefly in an April, 1999 message after Bell's first state-sponsored screwing. John Gilmore also pointed out that a lot of things people think are protected speech on Cypherpunks, actually aren't when you examine the case law used against Bell and similar defendants. As I wrote... The other thing I find interesting in this brief is the citing of case law which seems to gut the First Amendment with regard to politically motivated satire which discusses hypothetical violence against public officials. Indeed, while the statutes cited seem relatively straightforward with regard to what constitutes a threat, cited case law apparently permits the interpretation of a threat even if the defendant had no means or intent to carry it out, it was not communicated to the person allegedly targeted, and the person allegedly targeted would not have regarded it as a threat. So apparently, a non-threat can land you in jail as long as a ficticious "reasonable person" invented by the court, completely unaware of the context of the remark, can be hypothesized to have found it threatening in some way, even if neither you nor the person alleged to be threatened would have interpreted it in such a context. Under such an interpretation, Bell's mock trials of public officials, clearly designed as political theatre, could be considered criminal in the complete absence any genuine intent to do harm to public officials, and in the complete absence of any apprehension on the part of public officials that they might be harmed, as long as some hypothetical non-existent "reasonable person" could be deemed to have found the performance "threatening." This seems to tread dangerously close to outlawing pure political speech, which, according to the government, we do not need anonymity for, because we live in a "free society." It's would be real nice if Declan would someday write a Jim Bell article which explored the above issues, and didn't just quote Jim on what he intended to do to the pigfuckers next. As for Treasury Agent Jeff Gordon using anti-stalking laws, originally invented to protect terrified wives and girlfriends against psychotic ex's intent on killing them, as his current excuse to drag Mr. Bell into court, let me just say that I believe that my prior characterization of Mr. Gordon as the "World's Biggest Pussy" is still both Constitutionally protected and accurate. -- Eric Michael Cordian 0+ O:.T:.O:. Mathematical Munitions Division "Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law"
