Re: Cypherpunks as a Continuing Criminal Enterprise?

[Anonymous <nobody@replay.com>]

On Tue, 8 Sep 1998, Tim May wrote:

> Could our group be charged as a "continuing criminal enterprise" under the
> RICO statute?

Probably. Under RICO and associated laws they can get anyone for anything.
Well, except Komrade Klinton.

> 
> It occurs to me that if Carl Johnson, who is linked several times to our
> group/list in the court documents, is successfully prosecuted,then the Feds
> may be able to cite both Bell and Johnson as evidence of a conspiracy.
> 
> Which probably wouldn't be too hard to prove, as many of us have admitted
> to conspiring mightily to undermine various institutions. (And we even use
> encypted e-mail, the very essence of a secret conspiracy.)
> 
> It might be fun to see them try this. Would they charge some of us as
> ringleaders? Or would they declare the entity itself an illegal
> organization? (As they have done with various cultural, political, and even
> religous groups, like Hezbollah, the Aum religion, etc.)
> 
> Interesting times.

Quite.

One partial solution I see is to rewrite premail in C so it runs at a
respectable speed[1], fix some of the bugs[2], integrate it with more
mailers, and then encourage everybody to subscribe through nyms. I'd love
to see them try to prosecute users at nym.alias.net by presenting a court
order to Community Connexion in Oakland. ;) 

[1] Yes, it's really slow on slower machines. 
[2] One of the most obvious is when Premail sends out 3 copies of a
message for a 2 remailer chain, 9 copies for a 3 remailer chain, something
like 27 for a 4 remailer chain, and so on. If nothing else, that's a
security hole which allows people to know how many warrants they will
need.