From: frissell@panix.com (Duncan Frissell)
Date: Tue, 20 Sep 94 03:55:06 PDT
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: (fwd) "Will You Be a Terrorist?"
Message-ID: <199409201054.AA01140@panix.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


At 01:53 PM 9/17/94 -0700, Timothy C. May wrote:

>(In this interpretation, the remailers that many of us have talked
>about, designed, written software, run on our systems, etc., could be
>considered to be part of a conspiracy, should Bidzos, Mykotronx,
>ClariNet, the Feds, etc., choose to focus on remailers as "a
>continuing criminal enterprise.")

But we designed and deployed the remailers not as part of a criminal
enterprise but in an attempt to *generally* protect privacy.  We may also
have wanted to weaken some of the control measures inherent in the TCP/IP
protocols.  

The TCP/IP protocols are *not* a government.  It is legal to weaken them.
Additionally, federal courts have explicitly held that anonymous
communications (and anonymous associations) are protected by the First
Amendment.  

No US Attorney is going to be interested in the sort of messy political case
that would be involved in remailer prosecutions.

What we are doing in any case is more like sedition than a normal criminal
conspiracy.  The Feds have only brought two sedition cases in this century
(WWII isolationists and white supremicists in the 1980s) and didn't do too
well.  Sedition cases are real hard to win because in order to prove intent
to overthrow the government you have to prove some realistic capabilities.

Like Professor Crampton said when he saw my "Fuck the State" button in 1971
-- "That would be a rather large job, wouldn't it?" 

DCF