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I got "invited" to federal court over this (I ran the mailing list archive at MIT which USG used as evidence). I was outside the US at the time, working on ano

by rdl 13y ago

I got "invited" to federal court over this (I ran the mailing list archive at MIT which USG used as evidence). I was outside the US at the time, working on anon ecash in the Caribbean, so it was a request, not a demand. I met Jennifer Granick as a result, and learned the "if you can possibly avoid it, never ever set foot inside federal court" rule, which has subsequently served me quite well. Jim Bell probably tops weev as an unsympathetic defendant.

angersock 13y ago
I met Jennifer Granick as a result, and learned the "if you can possibly avoid it, never ever set foot inside federal court" rule, which has subsequently served me quite well. Would you be able to elaborate on that any further?
- rdl 13y ago
  I was outside the USA, and it was just a request with no legal weight. I stayed on a tiny island in the Caribbean for the duration of the trial. (It wasn't a big deal to FBI, either -- I answered their questions through counsel, and the whole thing was essentially a formality. Jim Bell was posting to a public list for which I maintained public archives, so I had no legal or moral duty to him or anyone else. I was 18 or 19, and almost went because it would have been a free trip to DC and potentially interesting, but the correctly raised concern is that I could have been ordered to remain available if I had been there. Not worth the risk, especially since I wasn't particularly helpful to anyone (I would have been fine with helping IRS CID when a guy was posting personal threats on people publicly) I actually tried to explain to both sides that my archiver wasn't assured to be canonical; it was just a regular list subscriber, with a simple to discover email address, and no inbound filtering (since cp list addresses were distributed and constantly changing), so anyone could post random messages to it. Even worse, sending a forged message id with new content would overwrite the original message.

by rdl 13y ago

angersock 13y ago

I met Jennifer Granick as a result, and learned the "if you can possibly avoid it, never ever set foot inside federal court" rule, which has subsequently served me quite well. Would you be able to elaborate on that any further?

rdl 13y ago
I was outside the USA, and it was just a request with no legal weight. I stayed on a tiny island in the Caribbean for the duration of the trial. (It wasn't a big deal to FBI, either -- I answered their questions through counsel, and the whole thing was essentially a formality. Jim Bell was posting to a public list for which I maintained public archives, so I had no legal or moral duty to him or anyone else. I was 18 or 19, and almost went because it would have been a free trip to DC and potentially interesting, but the correctly raised concern is that I could have been ordered to remain available if I had been there. Not worth the risk, especially since I wasn't particularly helpful to anyone (I would have been fine with helping IRS CID when a guy was posting personal threats on people publicly) I actually tried to explain to both sides that my archiver wasn't assured to be canonical; it was just a regular list subscriber, with a simple to discover email address, and no inbound filtering (since cp list addresses were distributed and constantly changing), so anyone could post random messages to it. Even worse, sending a forged message id with new content would overwrite the original message.