From: "Phillip M. Hallam-Baker" <hallam@ai.mit.edu>
Date: Mon, 20 Jan 1997 10:12:43 -0800 (PST)
To: cypherpunks <greens@hiwaay.net>
Subject: Using the political opportunity Was: Newt's phone calls
Message-ID: <199701201812.KAA14891@toad.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain




Sarah L. Green <greens@hiwaay.net> wrote in article
<5bo2df$7ui@life.ai.mit.edu>...
> On Thu, 16 Jan 1997, Phillip M. Hallam-Baker wrote:
> > 
> > It was a conference call but over a cellular phone. Martin had hacked
his
> > Radio Shack Scanner using a well known technique. He had a radio ham
> > license.
> > 
> Phill
> 	Actually I'd love to see this go to court & have the law itself 
> tossed out.  How many years have the airwaves been free?  Now it is 
> illegal to listen on the cellular frequencies.


Well I would love to see the case go to court but I prefer to see 
someone else being harassed.

I don't imagine for a minute that anyone will want to take it to
court though. Newt can hardly want his crookery to continue to
be before the public eye. He wants it buried as soon as possible 
so he can make similarly "arcane" charges "nobody understands"
against Clinton.

Interestingly the tax law that Newt broke was the use of non profit
funds for political purposes. Newt should know all about these since
the Republicans used these laws to shut down political comment by
the likes of the Sierra club etc under Reagan. I know several
people who used to be involved in non-profits who either resigned 
or changed the status of the group because the cost of administration
and risk of politically motivated prosecution was not worth the
tax advantages.

Given the "butterfly under the wheel" nature of the Republican
attack I would expect jury nullification in a big way. Meanwhile
there would be several weeks of questions asking why Newt is not
being prosecuted, only the Martins.

Despite the fact that I don't think the Democrats are smart enough
to mount such a conspiracy it would be a bloody good one if they 
had done.


I think that the challenge the crypto lobby must take on is to 
use the event to raise public consciousness for crypto rights. What
we probably need is a single issue lobby group that the media 
can call on for this and only this issue and nothing else. The
energies of the CDT and EFF are inevitably spread between this and
other issues such as the CDA. The problem is that a journalist
does not immediately think EFF or CDT when a cellphone case comes 
up. A single issue crypto lobby could fill that purpose.


		Phill