Re: Spam IS Free Speech

> Spam is interfering with the *real* victim's (the sendmail operator's) 
> ability to provide customer service; in a very real and fiscally 
> damaging way. 

It's worse than that; some asshole has just sent out a spam with a forged
return address at $$$$@unicorn.com. There is absolutely nothing I can do
to stop people sending such forgeries, yet my mailbox is about to explode
with megabytes of complaints and mailbombs. I hate to think what kind of
mess I'll have to deal with when I get back from my holiday next week. 

Anyone know how to track down the owner of 1-800-322-6169 EXT 2561, the
only contact information in the spam? I'm not in the US so I can't call
them to complain. Is there any way I and the spammees could take legal
action against them without spending vast amounts of money?

	Mark

P.S. Privtool 0.90 is just out at utopia.hacktic.nl; I'll send a proper
announcement soon. Privtool is a PGP-aware mail program for X-windows, see
details at http://www.unicorn.com/privtool/privtool.html.

At 3:27 AM -0800 5/22/97, Mark Grant wrote:
>> Spam is interfering with the *real* victim's (the sendmail operator's)
>> ability to provide customer service; in a very real and fiscally
>> damaging way.
>
>It's worse than that; some asshole has just sent out a spam with a forged
>return address at $$$$@unicorn.com. There is absolutely nothing I can do
>to stop people sending such forgeries, yet my mailbox is about to explode
>with megabytes of complaints and mailbombs. I hate to think what kind of
>mess I'll have to deal with when I get back from my holiday next week.

There are some advantages to having posts and messages forged in one's name.

Think: plausible deniability in a courtroom.

"And can you _prove_ that the article you claim my client sent to Mr. Bell
was actually written by him, and was not one of the many forgeries in my
client's name?"

I'm pretty glad I never started PGP-signing my posts, actually. I've
exchanged messages at various times with various people, and the
"non-ironclad" authorship of some of these articles may turn out to be
useful. I can always claim an article was one of Detweiler's forgeries. Or
one of the more sophisticated forgeries now being seen.

(Somewhat worrisome to me in this witch-hunting atmosphere was a special
mailing list of "activists" I was invited to join a couple of years ago. I
did join this list, but left after various acts of bombings and vengeance
were discussed. I now suspect that a couple of the most extreme
"provocateurs" were BATFags and other goons.)

--Tim May



There's something wrong when I'm a felon under an increasing number of laws.
Only one response to the key grabbers is warranted: "Death to Tyrants!"
---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
tcmay@got.net  408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA  | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
Higher Power: 2^1398269     | black markets, collapse of governments.
"National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

On Thu, 22 May 1997, Tim May wrote:

> There are some advantages to having posts and messages forged in one's name.
> Think: plausible deniability in a courtroom.
> "And can you _prove_ that the article you claim my client sent to Mr. Bell
> was actually written by him, and was not one of the many forgeries in my
> client's name?"

Yes, there certainly are advantages, though I wonder what will happen if
any of these 'junk email' laws go through. Next time someone decides to
spam with a forged unicorn.com address I could end up in court (of course
this is one of the many reasons why I'm against those laws even in the
current circumstances). At least this has givne me the incentive to set up
a proper email-filtering system even if it's wasted most of a day.

> I'm pretty glad I never started PGP-signing my posts, actually. I've
> exchanged messages at various times with various people, and the
> "non-ironclad" authorship of some of these articles may turn out to be
> useful. I can always claim an article was one of Detweiler's forgeries. Or
> one of the more sophisticated forgeries now being seen.

There's also something to be said for PGP-signing all your innocuous
posts; that could give you a greater potential for denial if you had a
history of signing and the 'dangerous' posts were unsigned.

	Mark

At 8:52 AM -0800 5/22/97, Mark Grant wrote:

>There's also something to be said for PGP-signing all your innocuous
>posts; that could give you a greater potential for denial if you had a
>history of signing and the 'dangerous' posts were unsigned.
>

I'm of course most worried that what I think of as my most basic
expressions of opinion would be treated by The Adversary as being
"dangerous."

Thus, my point about routinely signing posts stands.

--Tim May


There's something wrong when I'm a felon under an increasing number of laws.
Only one response to the key grabbers is warranted: "Death to Tyrants!"
---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
tcmay@got.net  408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA  | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
Higher Power: 2^1398269     | black markets, collapse of governments.
"National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

On Thu, 22 May 1997, Tim May wrote:

> Thus, my point about routinely signing posts stands.

Sure, I was talking in general; my point only applies to those who make
more 'government approved' posts than 'dangerous' ones. Of course there's
still no guarantee that next year I won't be presented with an old signed
post about something which was innocuous and is now hideously illegal.

On the subject of deniability perhaps we should all publically state that
we've forgotten the passphrase to some of the encrypted files we have
lying around and see if that works in court if we ever end up there. I
know I have a couple of secret keys whose passphrases I've forgotten and
had a few files which I may have deleted.

	Mark

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----

At 10:09 AM 5/22/97 -0700, Mark Grant wrote:
>
>Sure, I was talking in general; my point only applies to those who make
>more 'government approved' posts than 'dangerous' ones. Of course there's
>still no guarantee that next year I won't be presented with an old signed
>post about something which was innocuous and is now hideously illegal.

So far in my close observation of the history of American jurisprudence I 
haven't seen too many written things that were legal at one point and later 
became (criminally) illegal.  I've never seen someone punished criminally (in 
violation of the Constitution's ban on ex post facto laws) for past speech 
that became retroactively illegal.

Some people have been sued and suffered financially for speech or writing that 
had been "legal" and became "illegal" at some indeterminate time (racism, 
sexism, bigotry, and homophobia par exaple) but examples of criminal 
prosecution are much harder to think of.

There is the "hate speech" sentence enhancement to other crimes (beat up an 
old lady for kicks and serve time for assault beat up an old lady while saying 
unkind things about women and serve time for assault + hate speech).  Certain 
kiddie porn definitions changed as well but I didn't see any ex post facto 
repeals in there.  As long as you said/published stuff before it was illegal, 
you were OK.

On the other hand, I've seen loads of things that used to be illegal to 
say/publish legalized over the years though most of them were civil rather 
than criminal matters to begin with.

I've also seen plenty of cases (Jake Baker, Phil Zimmerman, the SEC vs the 
Financial Newsletters, the CDA) in which I knew in advance that the case was 
dead meat as soon as it got to an appeals court (or before).  Those pure 
speech cases (in the absence of filthy pictures) are the easiest ones to win.

I always encourage those arrested in such cases to take a hard line and abuse 
the prosecutors with the unwinnability of their cases.  If you've got it, 
flaunt it.

Jim Bell may do some time for tax evasion but they could have got him on that 
at any time.  He won't be doing any time for publishing AP.  

And we won't be doing any time for what we say on this list.

DCF

"I win $20 if the CDA vote is 8-1 or 9-0."
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On Thu, 22 May 1997 frissell@panix.com wrote:

> So far in my close observation of the history of American jurisprudence I 
> haven't seen too many written things that were legal at one point and later 
> became (criminally) illegal. 

I was thinking more of talking about things you do which are now legal but
later banned. For example a signed admission of smoking followed by a ban
and 'war on tobacco'. Not enough to lock you away for, but possibly enough
to make you a candidate for a dawn raid by the 'jackbooted fascists'; I'm
sure that if you had a nice piece of land to seize the message would be
used as evidence to back up an 'anonymous tip' about cigarette dealing in
order to get a warrant. 

	Mark

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----

>I want to expand on one of the points I just made. As I think about the
>issue more, the more I see signings of posts as being more of a help to my
>enemies (prosecutors, in this context) and less of a help to my friends.

I would assume that, if they're interested in your postings, they'll
record them at the source, either by tapping your phone or wiretapping
your house. In that case, signing your postings would make it more
difficult to forge a posting with your name on it. On the other hand,
if they break your private key's password, you're in bigger trouble.

>
>I'm not saying that signatures are not a Good Thing. Indeed, if I ever get
>a version of PGP or S/MIME adequately integrated with my OS and Eudora Pro,
>I may (or may not) start auto-signing all e-mail. (Gulp.)

PGP is coming soon. In the meantime, you can use FileCrypt, which
works well with Eudora on the Mac (I'm running it under an 8.0 beta
without problems). There's a time-limited demo version at
<http://www.highware.com> It is not encumbered by export control.

Martin.

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I want to expand on one of the points I just made. As I think about the
issue more, the more I see signings of posts as being more of a help to my
enemies (prosecutors, in this context) and less of a help to my friends.

At 9:14 AM -0800 5/22/97, Tim May wrote:


>"And can you _prove_ that the article you claim my client sent to Mr. Bell
>was actually written by him, and was not one of the many forgeries in my
>client's name?"
>
>I'm pretty glad I never started PGP-signing my posts, actually. I've
>exchanged messages at various times with various people, and the
>"non-ironclad" authorship of some of these articles may turn out to be
>useful. I can always claim an article was one of Detweiler's forgeries. Or
>one of the more sophisticated forgeries now being seen.

Consider that signing an article is offering something of value. (Standard
point about identity being just another credential, or element in a
negotiation.)

In almost all casual conversations, such as what we see on these mailing
lists, signature checking is not really needed. Absent evidence that
widespread forgery is going on, who cares whether "Mark Grant" is _really_
Mark Grant (whatever that may mean, philosophically).

Of more importance to me lately, given developing events, is that my words
will come back to haunt me in this post-free-speech era, where conspiracy,
RICO, and "plotting" are apparently the real crimes being prosecuted.

I'm not saying that signatures are not a Good Thing. Indeed, if I ever get
a version of PGP or S/MIME adequately integrated with my OS and Eudora Pro,
I may (or may not) start auto-signing all e-mail. (Gulp.)

(Oh, please don't barrage me with suggestions. I had two helpful suggetions
for "Pegasus Mail," ignoring the fairly well-known fact that I'm a Mac
user, not a Windows/NT user, and other suggestions about other products.
Puh-leese.)

What I'm saying is that signatures may be handing prosecutors too powerful
a tool to prosecute unpopular speech. Something to think about.

--Tim May



There's something wrong when I'm a felon under an increasing number of laws.
Only one response to the key grabbers is warranted: "Death to Tyrants!"
---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
tcmay@got.net  408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA  | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
Higher Power: 2^1398269     | black markets, collapse of governments.
"National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----

In <Pine.SOL.3.96.970522041838.26834D-100000@sirius.infonex.com>, on
05/22/97 
   at 05:27 AM, Mark Grant <mark@unicorn.com> said:


>> Spam is interfering with the *real* victim's (the sendmail operator's) 
>> ability to provide customer service; in a very real and fiscally 
>> damaging way. 

>It's worse than that; some asshole has just sent out a spam with a forged
>return address at $$$$@unicorn.com. There is absolutely nothing I can do
>to stop people sending such forgeries, yet my mailbox is about to explode
>with megabytes of complaints and mailbombs. I hate to think what kind of
>mess I'll have to deal with when I get back from my holiday next week. 

>Anyone know how to track down the owner of 1-800-322-6169 EXT 2561, the
>only contact information in the spam? I'm not in the US so I can't call
>them to complain. Is there any way I and the spammees could take legal
>action against them without spending vast amounts of money?

>	Mark

>P.S. Privtool 0.90 is just out at utopia.hacktic.nl; I'll send a proper
>announcement soon. Privtool is a PGP-aware mail program for X-windows,
>see details at http://www.unicorn.com/privtool/privtool.html.


Well this seems to be some MLM scam, get rich quick scheme. The number
dumps you into a prerecorded voice message for the Global Prosparity Group
(I doubt that it is a registered name). You may be able to get more
information calling 1-618-692-3972. It seems to be a number for the
company that owns the 1-800 number and manages the mailboxes for the other
companies.

I don't know what action if any you could do against this scumbag that
would be worth the expence. I would contact whoever he is using as a mail
gateway for his crap and see what if anything they are willing to do about
this.

Hope this helps,

- -- 
- -----------------------------------------------------------
William H. Geiger III  http://www.amaranth.com/~whgiii
Geiger Consulting    Cooking With Warp 4.0

Author of E-Secure - PGP Front End for MR/2 Ice
PGP & MR/2 the only way for secure e-mail.
                          
Finger whgiii@amaranth.com for PGP Key and other info
- -----------------------------------------------------------
 
Tag-O-Matic: "640K ought to be enough for anybody." - Bill Gates, 1981

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On Thu, 22 May 1997, Willaim H. Geiger III wrote:

> I don't know what action if any you could do against this scumbag that
> would be worth the expence. I would contact whoever he is using as a mail
> gateway for his crap and see what if anything they are willing to do about
> this.

Thanks... unfortunately all I have is an IP address (206.9.80.114), which
resolves to somewhere at means.net. I've mailed them but guess they're all
asleep at the moment.

	Mark