(fwd from IMC):
``...Although the agents were concerned with only two posts, the court order demands "all user connections logs" for a 48-hour period, which would include individual IP addresses for every person who posted materials to or visited the IMC site during the FTAA protests. The sealed court order also directed the IMC not to disclose "the existence of this Application or Order, or the existence of this investigation, unless or until ordered by this court."
As a news organization, we believe that the overwhelmingly broad and all-encompassing amount of information demanded by the FBI raises serious First Amendment issues. Furthermore, we believe the broad restrictions placed on the organization, by the sealed order, violate our constitutionally guaranteed First Amendment Rights....''
``I suppose the only solutions are to 1) have IMC's web server, Apache, stop logging IPs, or 2) write a script that purges the IPs from the logs after, say, 12, 24, or 36 hours. ....
And if things get really crazy, IMC can always turn /var/log/httpd into a Rubberhose(.org) filesystem: ....'' Kendall Clark
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See Justin? Rotten at the top, rotten all the way down. Forget constitutional protections. There are none. There is only prison--get it?
But there are other alternatives. Instead of going on a complete security lockdown, or playing legal games with fifth amendment protections of encrypted keys, --- go, exactly in the opposition direction.
Open up and post the fucking logs, daily. Hell, post everything---total transparency, total exposure: including the FBI, Secret Service, and the frick'n Judge's email, home addresses, phones numbers, and if you can get a hold of it, their fucking server's /var/log/httpd, ftpd, sshd, ppp.log, userlog, mount.today, mount.yesterday, maillog---whatever output you can get.
Information is at least a double edged blade.
For IMC, it might also be interesting to do both, encrypt everything and therefore force search and seizure warrants, and post everything---putting the government in the absurd position of not knowing if the encrypted version contains anything different from the non-encrypted version---and therefore making mush out of the justification for their searches and seizures. Why seise what's openly available?
They love to hide behind their security. Its their blanket. They depend on their security, they trust their security, their security is holy, the holiest of holies. So, fuck their security.
Time to pull down their panties and see what's in there. Hmm's, what's this thingy here guys? What happens if we pull it? Oh, did that hurt? Sorry.
After a few days of total exposure, our worships will be howling.
On the other hand, it might be interesting to set up a series of court cases in which the tables are turned in such a way that the US Attorney is attempting to appeal the very case law the feds have spent the last ten years creating for their own (and corp) protection. It would take a few legal geniuses with a very evil taste for the absurd. But, I suspect you could figure out a way to make absolute mush out of every bullshit decision this high court has made on the information economy.
Maybe http://www.rubberhose.org is part of a way to achieve this state of a total legal morass.
For those interested (Justin in particular), look this site up and read it. It illustrates that there is no constitutional protection (first, fourth, fifth amendments), so the only thing that remains is to play games with them---while we all await sentencing.
Here is a sample:
``{38} Close analysis of cases interpreting the Fifth Amendment suggests that the amendment does provide protection against the compulsory production of cryptographic keys. This protection can result from a reconciliation of the Court's inconsistency between the compulsory production of documentary evidence and its more general treatment of the doctrine of derivative use immunity. Even in the absence of such a reconciliation, the Court's precedents suggest that it can be expected to hold that the documents produced from a cryptographic key cannot be used against the producer of the key, because a cryptographic key authenticates and confers testimonial content on documents that are otherwise unauthenticated and meaningless..''
I think the basic theory used is that the key communicates content, since the content literally doesn't exist with out it. On the other hand, if a safe is locked and contains incriminating documents, one can be compelled to produce a key to open it, since production of the key itself is not self-incriminating. The same bullshit logic is followed in forced blood and breath tests for drug and alcohol use.
After all, if you have nothing to hide, then why do you need rights!
Well, yes, exactly---that's the point to an information age campaign of total exposure. Obviously we don't need any rights, since we don't have any.
Chuck Grimes