Re: Fight, or Roll Over?

At 10:41 AM 7/13/95, Douglas Barnes wrote:

>Since the Anti-Electronic Racketeering Act of 1995 might as well
>be called the "Anti-Cypherpunk Act of 1995", I'm surprised to see
>Tim throw in the towel already, when the bill hasn't even made it
>through committee yet.

I'd hardly call my view "throwing in the towel." What I said clearly enough
was that the Washingtonians can throw out repressive legislation much
faster than we can--and I speak in terms of "we" as being the EFF, EPIC,
NRA, ACLU, etc., and _not_ the Cyherpunks, who have no lobbying activities
to speak of.


>Go underground? Well, as I read it, this bill basically makes
>cypherpunks a "corrupt organization", subject to the full
>impact of the RICO statutes. With the passage of this bill, we

Indeed, this law makes the Cypherpunks group a co-conspirator. (In the same
way that the recent Omnibus Anti-Terrorism (or whatever it's callled)
criminalizes groups which support This Year's Enemies. (Like the War with
Oceania--or was it Eurasia?--the friend of today was yesterday's criminal
organization. For example, the Omnibus bill makes support of anti-PLO
groups a crime, for foreigners, as the PLO is now, this year, our "Partner
for Peace.")

>will have the same status in the US as the neo-Nazis have in
>Germany, and will have to adopt similar communications and
>organization techniques. Who knows, maybe this is the best thing
>that could happen, although I'm real curious about who will
>back off to protect their ass-ets and who will actually keep
>on chugging towards crypto anarchy.
>
>In the short term, I've renewed or started memberships in the
>organizations that are likely to fight this -- but I'm also
>fired up to get more easy-to-use software out there, and
>do what I can to help build infrastructure that can resist this
>sort of nonsense.

This is all I'm suggesting, that yet another round of trying to persuade
Congress people is a waste, and that the _traditional_ focus on technology
is a better use of our time and effort.

Others are welcome to do as they wish. I'm just expressing my view that
Washington can spin out legislation faster than we can respond....they are,
after all, using our tax dollars to generate new laws, and have
intelligence agencies and law enforcement agencies on their side with
armies of lawyers and lobbyists to help. Multi-billion dollar budgets are
also at stake.

The lobbyists for preserving liberty are few and far between.

Some would say this means Cypherpunks should step into the fray and become
a lobbying group. I don't see us as having the structure or organization to
become such a group. Those who wish to should probably form a real group to
do this, with bylaws and elected officials.

Anarchies are great, but there's no way an anarchy can have a "spokesman,"
or a budget for travel and lobbying, or a hundred other things that a
lobbying group needs. Cypherpunks--this list--is just not in a position to
be this group.


--Tim May

..........................................................................
Timothy C. May         | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
tcmay@sensemedia.net   | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
408-728-0152           | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
Corralitos, CA         | black markets, collapse of governments.
Higher Power: 2^756839 | Public Key: PGP and MailSafe available.
"National borders are just speed bumps on the information superhighway."

On Thu, 13 Jul 1995, Timothy C. May wrote:

> 
> I'd hardly call my view "throwing in the towel." What I said clearly enough
> was that the Washingtonians can throw out repressive legislation much
> faster than we can--and I speak in terms of "we" as being the EFF, EPIC,
> NRA, ACLU, etc., and _not_ the Cyherpunks, who have no lobbying activities
> to speak of.

I'm glad you brought this up, Tim, because Pat Farrell, Carl Ellison, and
I have been discussing the possiblility of doing just that over the past
week or so.  The three of us, in addition to many others (we like to call
ourselves "The Mid-Atlantic Cypherpunks") are very near DC and thought we
might take advantage of this on behalf of others who don't have the luxury
of living near their legislators. 

Our idea (and it was originally limited to lobbying against the CDA, but
we can expand it now to lobby against that and S.974) was to have Cypherpunks
send letters (yes, authentic _snail mail_) to a Cypherpunk willing to go
deliver it in person, (namely me) and talk to whoever is there, be it the
congressperson or one of his/her aides.  The strategy of this action would
be to say,"hello, we represent <insert your organization here> and we
oppose <insert appropriate legislation title here> and we feel this way
because <insert very reasonable and diplomatic explanations in easy,
mono-syllabic words so that the congresscritter can understand here> and
here is a letter from one of your constituents who feels the same way we
do."  A simple lobby. 

I thought this might be effective because it seems that a lot of
representatives are difficult to get in touch with, since not all of them
have e-mail addresses.  I think there is a certain advantage in this kind
of action from an educational standpoint, considering that the House
doesn't seem to have a strong backer for this bill like the Senate did,
and the many Congresscritters who know nothing about the net only need
someone to explain the consequences of such a bill to them.  Furthermore,
to those ignorant of the net and its ways, a printed out list of names and
e-mail addresses collected through the web is completely foreign and
perhaps intimidating to them, and therefore not all that helpful to us,
IMHO.  Hand-signed letters (or hand-written, if your printing is more
legible than mine) in good, old-fashioned envelopes is just what critters
of this sort need to see. 

If any US citizens here would like me (and hopefully some older, wiser 
cypherpunks willing to join me on this trip) to deliver a letter to their 
congressperson please send a letter to this address:

                          The Hon. Whoever
                        c/o Kathleen M. Ellis
                           TSU box 898
                        Towson State University
                         8000 York Road
                          Towson, MD  21204

On the envelope you must include:

	The name of the congressperson (if I have to open the letter to be able 
			to tell who it is meant for it'll lose some of its 
			authenticity)

	My full address (yes, all five lines of it, or i'll never get it)

	If you can get it, the office location of representative 
			(building name and room number) printed on the 
			back or something, if you can't find it don't 
			worry, I'll find it, but if you can find it I'd 
			appreciate it.  You can get it at the URL below.

	A return address

	A postmark from your district

The letter must have:

	The specific bill you are against; its number, title, and sponsors 
			(the CDA is H.R.1004/S.652 sponsored by 
			Senator James Exon, from Nebraska)

	Possible alternatives (my suggestion is H.R. 1978, sponsored by 
			Cox and Wyden)

	A polite introuduction, a concise body, and a gracious 
			conclusion :). 

	Your address and signature.

If you need more information for your letter, good URLs on the subject are:

http://www.cdt.org/cdw.html
http://www.cdt.org/petition.html
http://www.eff.org/pub/EFF/Issues/censorship/Exon_bill/
http://uvacs.cs.virginia.edu/~hwh6k/public/S314_stuff.html
http://www.phantom.com/~slowdog
http://www.panix.com/vtw/exon/

If you don't know who your representative is, try to find her/him through

http://www.house.gov

and look for a familiar looking name from your state.  Unfortunately 
there's no "point-and-click" US map to refer to to find out which 
district is yours, but you should be able to find out fairly easily by 
looking for familiar names.  If you really get stuck, try your local 
League of Women Voters.

The main thing is, I need these letters soon.  In order to have a shot at
getting to talk to anyone, I must make appointments with the offices of
the respective representatives.  The house is expected to vote on this
topic any day now; the clock's a-ticking.  I ask that all letters be sent
so that I can recieve them by July 23rd.  I aim to raid congress on
Tuesday, July 25th.  This date could be changed, depending on the definite
responses I get from people willing to help. 

I have lobbied before, and I'm up to the task, but it would be nice to
have some other politically-oriented cypherpunks along for, at the very
least, moral support.  Anybody interested, Please Please Please send me
some e-mail.  Carl or Pat might go, and if we get enough people to help we 
can split the workload among teams.

If anyone has comments/questions/suggestions, don't hesitate.  I'd
appreciate whatever isn't necesary to go up on the list to be sent to me
privately, so's I don't get into trouble for "inciting spam". 

-=Kathleen M. Ellis=-

kelli@zeus.towson.edu              http://zeus.towson.edu/~kelli/
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