Re: Jim Bell raid

[Sergey Goldgaber <sergey@el.net>]

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On Wed, 9 Apr 1997, Greg Broiles wrote:

- -> At 04:56 AM 4/9/97 -0400, Sergey Goldgaber wrote:
- -> >The search warrant was not made public on the cpunks list.  As you can see
- -> >form the above excerpt, I was commenting on the "IRS Inspection" report,
- -> which
- -> >was virtually the first description of Jim Bell's arrest, long before there
- -> >were even requests for information on the procedures for obtaining the
- -> >search warrants, etc...
- -> 
- -> I realize that we're talking about net-time, but "long before" seems like a
- -> poor way to describe the 2-2.5 days between the appearance of the "IRS
- -> Inspection" report (which was, in fact, the transcription of newspaper story)

Time flies fast on the Internet; or haven't you noticed?  Three days of rather
heated discussion took place between the time the arrest was announced and 
your message saying that you had the warrants, etc.

- -> and the WWW publication of the warrant & accompanying material.

I saw no mention anywhere on the list of those documents being available,
only that you were considering making them available.

By the way, at the time I wrote my quoted response, you yourself had as
little "clue" as most anyone else:

 -> Date: Thu, 03 Apr 1997 12:16:19 -0800
 -> From: Greg Broiles <gbroiles@netbox.com>
 -> To: cypherpunks@toad.com
 -> Subject: Jim Bell raid
 -> 
 -> A southern Washington newspaper, The Columbian (apparently published in
 -> Vancouver) provides a "greeked" (e.g., squiggles instead of text) version of
 -> its front page at http://www.columbian.com (you'll have to pick the frame for
 -> "The latest Columbian headlines") - and today's page one above-the-fold
 -> headline is "Affidavit: Internet essay solicits murder".
 -> 
 -> It looks to me like this is real. Yow. Jim Bell is a goddamn loon, but I
 -> haven't seen him write anything that I thought was criminal.

My message followed three hours later.  I see it was directed against your
hasty "loon" conclusion.  This explains the tone of your later message,
along with your determination.  It seems like you're taking this a little
personally.

- -> Also, Declan
- -> was posting details from the warrant within 24 hours of the initial message.

All he said was that he had them.  No details.

And all this is so nitpicky that I can't believe I even bothered originally
replying to you, merely because of the patronizing tone of your message.
I must have been having a bad day.  Today is worse, though, witness the
present message.

The rest of your post is at least intelligently worded, however, so I'm glad I
persevered through it.

- -> As far as I can tell, the events of last week haven't changed people's
- -> opinions of AP at all - people who thought it was interesting/useful still
- -> do, and people who thought it was uninteresting/stupid still do. I can't
- -> speak for other posters to the list, but I'm inclined to distance myself from
- -> AP not because I'm scared of a government raid,

Perhaps you should be!  Where's that healthy cypherpunk paranoia?  :)

- -> but because I think it's theoretically uninteresting/unremarkable, 

I think its rather interesting, at least as far as discussions of
possible consequences of cryptography are concerned.  And theory that
brings together technology and ethics is all the most interesting.

- -> politically/tactically poorly considered

His original posting was ill considered, I agree.  He did consider it much
more in the following years, you must concede.  Bell did not, afterall,
propose that we fight a land war in China.  This scheme relies mostly
on encryption and anonymity, which takes care of the tactical part.
His political agenda is at least self consistant.

- -> morally indefensible, and 

What a cro-magnon sentiment, and coming from such a bright lad.  :)
(Sorry, my turn to be patronizing :)

Morality is logically indefensible.  If it weren't for your earlier
disclaimer, saying that you're speaking only for yourself, I'd go off
on a philosophy/ethics rant.

- -> irresponsibly misleading to the extent it purports to discuss US law.

I've got to hand it to you there.  No where does he claim to be a lawyer.
However, he does give the impression of knowing the law.

- -> I don't want my comments about Jim Bell's right to discuss his silly 
- -> ideas to be confused with apologies or approval for the ideas themselves.

Duly noted.

- -> I believe Jim has every right to write essays about AP, give speeches &
- -> seminars about AP, talk about "wonderful things" all that he likes, etc.

Agreed.

- -> But
- -> the "marketplace of ideas" model, whereby good speech is expected to negate
- -> bad speech, depends on the willingness of other people to provide "good
- -> speech", or at least call "bad speech" into question. I think AP is "bad
- -> speech" in the same way the "the earth is flat" is bad speech; it is (and
- -> ought to be) legal to say it, but it's also a non-useful idea, which I hope
- -> will be abandoned in favor of more useful ideas.

Ah, an advocate of the survival of the fittest idea, and a utilitarian to boot.
Well, may your memes flourish.  However, to be consistent, you must admit
that the fittest and more "useful" ideas may have nothing to do with your
defenses of particular politics, morals, or laws.  In fact, they have as
much, or more, to with the environment that they are in as their content.
Thus, there is no "bad speech" or "good speech".  Certain ideas simply "win"
in certain circumstances.  Had the circumstances been slightly different,
different ideas would have "won".

- -> I've been ignoring (pre-raid) discussions about AP because I think that an
- -> eternal recycling of arguments is uninteresting and unproductive.

I'm following you.

- -> I think
- -> that the search of Jim's house, and its relationship to his free speech
- -> activities, is interesting - not because of the [lack of] quality of his
- -> ideas, but because I think this may be a case where law enforcement used its
- -> power to search & seize property in a punitive fashion. And that concerns me,
- -> because I think that isn't uncommon where the target is a "dissident", of one
- -> flavor or another; and I think that dissidents don't/shouldn't lose their
- -> civil rights as a consequence of their status. ("when they came for .."
- -> argument incorporated herein by reference.)

I definately and wholeheartedly agree with your sentiments here.

- -> (The search is also interesting for reasons unrelated to Jim and his ideas,
- -> because it provides insight into the level and type and timing of law
- -> enforcement access to the net, treatment of a "confidential informant", and
- -> protocol/procedure for search & seizure of computers and potentially
- -> encrypted data, etc.)

Si.

- -> But that doesn't mean that the dissidents get special respect or treatment
- -> for poor thinking. I think AP is poorly reasoned and poorly researched. (And
- -> I think that "dissident" + "poor analysis/research" + "obsessive focus" =
- -> "loon", hence my original comments.)

I disagree with your acusation concerning "poor analysis/research".  Thus
I can not agree with even your definition of "loon".  Besides, there are
other possible, sometimes contradictory, variables fitting in to this 
oversimplistic equation that would also = "loon".  For example, 
"sheep" + "religion" + "obsessive focus" = "loon"
"freethinker" + "athiest" + "obsessive focus" = "loon"
"cypherpunk" + "statist" + "obsessive focus" = "loon"

Then there's:

"obsessive focus" = "loon"

which brings up another view, namely:

"obsessive focus" = "dedication"

As far as "poor analysis/research" in and of itself goes: there have been
plenty of groundbreaking works which had very poor analysis, but were
invaluable in "showing the way".  Many of their authors were very dedicated.
And some were even, !gasp!, "dissident".  At the very least, dedication 
has often led to the publicization of ideas which are thereafter better
researched by others (we can call them "drones", "librarians", "technicians",
or even "computers").

In any case, I've long gone past the point of rambling... and long past
the general topicality of cypherpunks, so I'll shut up.

Now...  Goodnight.  :)

And, don't take this post too seriously as it is 3:41 AM here, and I'm
past the point of starting to nod off...........

zzzz......


 ............................................................................
 . Sergey Goldgaber <sergey@el.net>      System Administrator        el Net .
 ............................................................................
 .   To him who does not know the world is on fire, I have nothing to say   .
 .                                                      - Bertholt Brecht   .
 ............................................................................

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