From: Tim May <tcmay@got.net>
Date: Tue, 28 Oct 1997 03:36:16 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: DEA trying to subpoena book dealers
In-Reply-To: <3.0.3.32.19971027084119.006bf4fc@popd.ix.netcom.com>
Message-ID: <v03102805b07a846387f7@[207.167.93.63]>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



At 9:41 AM -0700 10/27/97, stewarts@ix.netcom.com wrote:
>Heard on the radio this morning that a book publisher in Berkeley
>received a subpoena from the DEA (not from a judge, from a DEA agent...)
>requesting information on everybody in Arizona who bought their
>book on marijuana hydroponics.  The publisher declined to cooperate,
>and there was a nice First Amendment riff from the reporter about it.
>Their name sounded like Ronin Press.  A book store in Tempe also received
>a subpoena for names of everyone who'd bought the book.

At the Gun Show I was at yesterday, a book dealer (who deals only in cash,
not checks and not credit cards, and who has no interest in keeping names
of customers in any kind of file) said that law enforcement often wanders
around the tables at the gun show, asking about the books on making C-4
explosives, making silencers for guns, growing dope, making
methamphetamines, rigging booby traps, etc. This is why most of the dealers
operate on a cash-and-carry basis. I don't know if any of the dealers have
yielded to pressures to give up lists of customers, but I suspect most of
them haven't. And cash makes it tough.

(This is, ObCrypto, why true 2-way untraceability is needed for ecash
systems. When Chaum speaks of only 1-way untraceability (protecting the
buyer from surveillance) being needed, he neglects the cases where law
enforcement busts a _seller_.  For online transactions, this is a very real
issue. Suppliers of the above-type information, but also suppliers of birth
control information, abortion info, controversial material, pornography,
etc. Chaum conceded these points, and said he'd think about how sellers
could be protected in his latest scheme.)

By the way, most of these books are of a far more accurate, it appears,
quality than that found in the usual book cited, "The Anarchist Cookbook."
That book was most probably a CIA disinformation work, designed to blow up
some would-be bombmakers. Sort of like "think of it as evolution in action."

The dealer I bought $150 worth of books and pamphlets from had a sign
saying "This ain't Barnes and Noble." Indeed.

As for plant cultivation, I'm sure we all recall the cases where DEA SWAT
teams have raided homes because some electric company report gave the DEA
some suspicion that grow lamps were being used. (In a lot of these raids,
there are "side effects" of the residents being sprayed with small arms
fire. "Whoops." Even more embarassing when no grow lamps are found.
"Whoops." So much for the Fourth Amendment, which was gutted more than 70
years ago during the First War on Drugs.)



>Cypherpunks relevance?  Will web publishers get the same treatment?
>Will corporations running Corporate Message Recovery get requests
>for email sent to their sales addresses?  How many of them will comply
>rather than noticing the bogosity of the subpoena?  On the other hand,
>at least with CMR, companies can set decide how much information to keep,
>and this sort of abuse may encourage them to limit their use of it.

Though it's more likely with CMR deployed for companies to be _instructed_
by the FTC, SEC, OSHA, IRS, etc., _not_ to delete messages from their CMR
archives. In fact, I'll bet that if CMR is widely deployed in corporate
America that various regulatory agencies will publish standards (like
Accounting standards) for how such CMR archives are to be handled.

Altering CMR archives will be treated akin to shredding files, which most
companies are now disincentivized from doing.

--Tim May

The Feds have shown their hand: they want a ban on domestic cryptography
---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
ComSec 3DES:   408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA  | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
Higher Power: 2^2,976,221   | black markets, collapse of governments.
"National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."