From: Bill Stewart <bill.stewart@pobox.com>
Date: Sun, 19 Apr 1998 14:48:06 -0700 (PDT)
To: John Gilmore <cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: "Lawful access" vs warrants:  I found the difference today!
In-Reply-To: <199804192043.NAA18656@toad.com>
Message-ID: <3.0.5.32.19980419144630.0084d100@popd.ix.netcom.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
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At 01:43 PM 4/19/98 -0700, John Gilmore gnu@toad.com wrote:
>It's Executive Order 12333, signed by our favorite senile president,
>Ronald Reagan, in 1981.  It says:
Reagan wasn't senile yet in 81.  :-)  But yes, it's scary.

>In other words, if the Attorney General claims that someone is an
>agent of a foreign power, no warrants are needed; the target has no
>Constitutional rights any more:
...
>You will recall that the Attorney General made exactly this claim
>about Martin Luther King (that he was an agent of a foreign power), to
>justify the years of FBI surveillance.  For all we know, they have
>been claiming that anyone who advocates crypto legalization must be
>an agent of a foreign power.  It really wouldn't surprise me.

Even though there basically aren't any foreign Commies left any more,
there's always The Pope, and Zionism, and Foreign Drug Cartels, and 
foreign embassies*, and foreign-based MultiNational Corporations, 
and people with accounts in Swiss banks or Anguillan computers.  
Power isn't just for governments any more.

Anarchists distinctly don't work for foreign powers, but it's
close enough for government work.

And more importantly, if by Executive Order, the President
claims that granting the executive branch "access"
to things makes it "lawful", then nobody's safe from fiat law.

~~~
* If they clue in to Elgoland and Vargaland, some of us could
be in Big Trouble :-)
~~~
				Thanks! 
					Bill
Bill Stewart, bill.stewart@pobox.com
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