Weaver/BATF trial

[""L. Detweiler"" <ld231782@longs.lance.colostate.edu>]

The Washington Post portrayal posted courtesy of P. Ferguson is beyond
deeply disturbing, and borders on the horrifyingly shocking.
Particularly the sniper aim on Weaver's wife--around her children!--I
found brutally, heinously barbarian. One wonders if law enforcement is
composed of responsible servants or maurading mercenaries. I'm really
stunned not to see any reaction in the popular press so far to this
editorial, but I suspect it won't sow ripples but hurtle shearing
shockwaves through the media for years to come.

However, perhaps just a few weeks have passed since T.C. May admonished
and chastised various members for `demonizing' opponents, and then
posts a few statements as follows (the sheer bluntness reminds me of
the long-dead cries of Murderous Thug on this list, and I feel
compelled to respond by blunting the mad, chaotic, rambling, and
unfocused shooting):

>The killing of that Fed in Idaho was fully justified, as the jury just
>confirmed.
>The BATF, DEA, Marshal's Service, and their kind have essentially
>become a Gestapo-like band of secret police. They raid homes without
>proper warrants (Phil Karn has told us of the San Diego case), they
>entrap innocents, they use high tech satellite imagery to locate plots
>of land they want for various purposes and then trump up charges (the
>Oxnard-Santa Monica case where the County wanted a guy's land and then
>drew up drug charges, raided him, and killed him...no drugs were
>found), and they seize computers and modems of folks like Steve
>Jackson without bothering to do their homework.

Killing justified? Gestapo-like band of secret police? Yeeks. First of
all, please resist the temptation to tar a vast number of law
enforcement agents with the same brush under the polarizing heading
`they'. It is more dangerous to see enemies everywhere than only
somewhere (hm, I think the inspiration for that quote came from your
own words). Unless they all showed up at an annual Loot & Pillage
Conference and traded techniques and swapped success stories, my
suspicions wouldn't be aroused.  But as it stands your paragraph starts
out with the explosion of `Gestapo band of secret police' and ends with
a limp whine of `without bothering to do their homework'.

As it stands, there is actually a bit of hostility between different
law enforcement branches (best documented, I think, in Hacker Crackdown
by Sterling, as in FBI vs. local police forces). This animosity
prevents the various groups from wholeheartedly colluding, for which we
can be ecstatically thankful for. Yes, the individual agencies are
extremely dangerous in some of their recent actions, but this is more
adequately explained in terms of local stupidity and imperialism than
global malice and conspiracy.  Ah, but the most dangerous call comes next:

>And perhaps their next target will be "crypto-terrorists" like us.
>After all, many of us advocate overthrowing the fascist/socialist
>government (I know I do, and many of you do, too), and many of us
>believe strong crypto is the key ingredient for bypassing tax systems,
>for trading weapons technology details with others (how long before
>some of us are charged with aiding and abetting the enemy?), and for
>creating a transnational cyberspace.

Uhm, I think if law enforcement officials were at all alarmed by our
presence we would have encountered rather obvious signs by now. But
look how little interference has been erected in front of
cypherpunkesque adventurism. Cypherpunk remailers have only gone down
for extremely mundane reasons.  A rather feeble letter was sent to the
operator of soda.berkeley.edu suggesting in the most delicate terms
that something might be amiss (for which there was great ensuing
fireworks, our nervous-edgy heavy barrage of artillery and cannons
aimed at a wandering rabbit).  *Nothing* has come of the Mycotronx
postings like a Tianamen Square tank-rolling clampdown massacre
response by the Establishment. We don't even have the whimper of a
single misguided officer pursuing a lone local vigilante justice
revenge power trip. We got spectacular coverage in Wired and the New
York Times and not even a sneeze from a real red-blooded shifty-eyed Enemy in Black.

>The Feds must surely come to see us as the enemy.

The `Feds' are actually numerous and disparate agencies, have created
their own realities that they live in, and so far have almost,
apparently, *completely* ignored the Cacaphony of the Cypherpunks.

I believe the situation is that the pillars we are targeting most
directly (e.g. the NSA, FBI) are precisely those that are most limited
in meeting and engaging us on our terms of warfare of a
public-relations campaign. When they say anything in the media they
sound absolutely ridiculous -- the FBI with their `a lot of dead bodies
lying around' and `cryptography as nitroglycerin,' Denning's `I'm not
sure if people should be informed' come to mind.  Their clandestine
preference is our strongest asset. We can advance by being loud and
obnoxious and they cannot (a sort of Perotian-Clintonian relationship).
So far I think we have exercised it effectively, galliantly, and
perhaps even superbly. But as soon as we make statements that bespeak
fanatic paranoia and dangerous and polarizing rhetorical posturing we
will be swiftly discredited or hammered.

>We need to be as prepared as Randy Weaver was!

This is a rather irresponsible and dangerous sentiment and metaphor. I
urge you to reconsider. Which cypherpunks are volunteering to barricade
themselves from the police in their houses?  To defy some court
proceedings because of `distrust' of the prosecution? To arm their
children with rifles for `defense'? Mr. Weaver was apparently subject
to the most grave miscarriage of law enforcement in many years, perhaps
only second to the Waco massacre in recent history if reported elements
of the recent story hold up. But the fact remains that he refused to go
to court and completely defied *our* `system' that has been erected to
defend the innocent. He managed to delay going to court by a few months
with absolutely disastrous and horrible payment.

In fact, one could argue quite convincingly that Weaver was very
clearly a victim of his own paranoia. If he had trusted the courts to
minimize his plight the gruesome horror show might have been averted.
Perhaps not. But are we cypherpunks now going to take on the American
Judicial System? Dissolute focus means dissolute energy.

Finally, I would like to take up the question of the Weaver Debacle in
relation to the nation's media. First, anything this horrendous takes
*years* to penetrate and percolate through the American consciousness
and media, so we should be patient.  It is like the trickle of Chinese
water torture--one can go insane in the process. The fallout from the
Steve Jackson games case has taken that long. (This is not to
discourage public relations but to encourage it.)  Secondly, the
American public is actually firmly supportive of some of these bloody
miscarriages. For example, Reno's approval/popularity soared after her
public post-Waco culpability speeches. That is, we have met the enemy,
and he is us. We *must* change American attitudes if we are to thwart
future egregious law enforcement violations. And in this quest I think
there is nothing but grave pallor in elevating Weaver as an epitomizing
icon of our cause.