From: Ryan Lackey <rdl@mit.edu>
Date: Thu, 24 Jul 1997 00:26:18 +0800
To: cypherpunks@Algebra.COM
Subject: Re: IRS sending warning notes, violating ECPA?
Message-ID: <199707231616.MAA19478@the-great-machine.mit.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
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(I think Tim is doing a lot more for the cypherpunks cause by not being
in jail than he would being locked up in jail pending trial for 5 months..
but that's not really an issue anyway -- one's life is one's own, do as thou
wilt and all)

Something which I think would be more interesting would be if someone set up
a fairly aggressive legal fund and technical assay organization to use
the civil courts to try to challenge silly crypto laws, using some of the
proceeds from evaluating and certifying vendor security products.  Something
like a "contribute $1 by electronic cash system of your choice" to a variety
of "charities" (things where you gain some tangible benefit by their success,
like the repeal of crypto export legislation, etc.) -- perhaps some kind of
silly web server which collected deposits, automatically did the paperwork
for tax purposes, forwarded money to the organizations, etc., either 
anonymously or not.

Perhaps this is a bad example, but I think there are a lot more things people
could do outside of jail than in it.  It might be stylish to have a martyr
locked up in jail who we could all invoke at random times, but I'd much 
prefer to actually win.  'Cypherpunks write code' is nicer than 'Cypherpunks
get locked up in jail for doing not so creative things, rather than having
others do them, and not even doing them terribly effaciously'.

I think I'll go back to setting up my little os9 network and toying with
novel security concepts (twas a good suggestion, whoever mentioned it here.
i'd always ignored os9...it turns out it's quite a fun toy, and a useful
building block).