From: tallpaul@pipeline.com (tallpaul)
Date: Tue, 12 Dec 1995 06:50:51 +0800
To: Bill Stewart <stewarts@ix.netcom.com>
Subject: Re: [NOISE] GAK and self-incrimination?
Message-ID: <199512111401.JAA08705@pipe6.nyc.pipeline.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


On Dec 10, 1995 23:55:13, 'Bill Stewart <stewarts@ix.netcom.com>' wrote: 
 
 
 
> 
>Testimony was often compelled by more direct means than threatened 
>contempt citations.  Piling rocks on people until they talked was 
>still in use in the 1600s, unless I've got my dates wrong. 
>It may have gone out of fashion slightly after witch-burning, 
>but was still in recent cultural memory of the Constitution's authors. 
> 
 
The rock process was called "pressing" and it had an economic basis to it,
if my memory serves. 
 
The laws of the time permitted the state (i.e. often the little village) to
confiscate the property of those convicted of crimes in a court. Remember
that many of the witch etc. accusations were made among the residents of
the same villages with all of the petty resentments, vindictive people, and
"nuts" that exist in every location and every time throughout history. 
 
The legal system did not permit someone to be tried for a crime until they
had entered their plea of guilty or not guilty. In other words, you could
charge them with being a witch. Then you demanded that they enter a plea.
Then you try them, and likely convict them. Then you confiscate their
property. People who reused to enter a plea jammed up the entire process --
no plea = no trial = no verdict = no property confiscation. 
 
To avoid this unpleasant series of equations, the forces bringing the
charges wanted a way of forcing people to plea to the charge. They wanted
it to be reasonably safe, since a person who died passed their property on
to the rest of the family. But they also wanted it to be unpleasant enough
to actually compell the accused to actually enter the plea. 
 
Thus pressing was invented. 
 
Stones were slowly added over a period of days to produce maximum
discomfort with minimal chance of an accidental death. 
 
(Now what does this have to do with strong crypto?) 
 
Well, why would the person charged refuse to plea unless they were guilty?
(Beginning to sound a little familiar?) 
 
Futplex's original post brings up yet another example from history where
human behavior has nothing to do with crime. The person who refused to
plead so refused not out of any sense of guilt but from something entirely
different.  
 
If I'm not guilty why do I want strong crypto? Sometimes for the same
reason I want a shredder.  And why do I want a shredder? Sometimes just to
keep the local gossip from going through my papers after I throw them out. 
 
--tallpaul