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Crypto Advocate Under Investigation by FBI
Seth Scali writes "Cryptography advocate and former member of the IETF staff William Simpson is under investigation by the FBI for treason. Apparently, he is accused of 'challenging authorities and laws that may impinge upon his activities'. " As you would imagine, the case involves cryptography and the DOJ/FBI has some other strong feelings about crypto folks.
The premise of civil disobedience is not that you can violate laws, moon the judge, and then declare yourself inncocent and scott-free.
You must accept that there will be reprocussions often quite painful, if not deadly for your actions, fair or unfair, legal or illegal. You expect, though, that your plight will draw the attention of others who agree that the laws are unjust and will put forth the effort to change them.
Of course, once you commit to violating laws, it becomes your obligation to fight for whatever rights that you believe are held in question. But don't expect the establishment to make it easy for you. That's not their job. Their job is to stay in power.
_______________________________
FBI should spend its time investigating RICHARD STALLMAN. That guy is a dangerous COMMUNIST. And the GPL his tool for world domination.
I didn't know that advocating that laws be changed could possibly fall under the charge of Treason. The United States is founded on the principle that if laws suck, you change them through the democratic process. If the FBI can investigate people for holding different beliefs than those in office, that circumvents the whole idea of freedom of thought and speech. This proves that the FBI is indeed too powerful and needs to be checked. I'll now go retire to my room where I'll await Hoover's G-men who are no doubt on their way to interrogate and shoot me.
In other words, you're arguing that A is bad, and that A+B is bad, therefore B is bad.
Gee. Last time I checked, the U.S. Constitution was very specific about what constitutes treason:
Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort.
This is just another attempt by the FBI to terrorize an innocent citizen. They have no legal standing to accuse him of treason, and they know it.
But then, terrorizing citizens is what the FBI is there for, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised.
IIRC, Phil Zimmermann was "under investigation" for some time, after the release of PGP; after they finally decided he wasn't going to be intimidated, and the bad publicity, like any publicity, was just spreading PGP faster, they dropped the whole thing.....
--
-=DaveHowe=-
Wow. First post. Not that it matters to me. Maybe I'll be moderated period for once. ;P
Seriously, this doesn't surprise me. It wouldn't surprise me if I was under investigation for being a privacy advocate, critical of government policies against citizens, and a PGP user. I am for IPSec, I *use* a form of IPSec. I don't believe in the right of the gov't to blatantly ignore the constitution in the 'interests of national security.'
National security. You sure hear that term a lot, don't you? Now, I have to think. What do they really mean by national? Obviously not national, as national would mean not only the gov't, but every citizen and legal resident of the United States of America. Nothing is done in the interest of National security; it's done in the interests of government security. The government maintains it's power by asserting it's power over it's people. Sometimes fairly and justly - hate crimes, Roe vs. Wade, hate crime legislation. Other times, unjustly and basically illegally - anti-crypto, censorship, harassment. There is no doubt in anyone's mind that the FBI has repeatedly abused it's power. The same for the NSA. They both have multi-billion dollar 'black' budgets - budgets that do not have to be accounted for. They can spend the money from that budgeanything without having to account for a single penny , or state what it is spent on.
Don't think the government will stop there, though. It wouldn't surpriese me if this advocate became the next Kevin Mitnick. The next step, logically, is for the FBI to file secret evidence and lock him up in a federal prison, and deny him access to computers for the rest of his life. And don't doubt that the FBI will at the least try to. Why wouldn't they? It's his strongest voice. That's what he's scaring them with now.
Fight oppression. Fight back. Promote your own privacy. National security should mean NATIONAL security - not government security. Use PGP. Don't keep passwords written down. Refuse illegal search and seizure. Complain to the appropriate authorities about harassment. You have rights in this country, unless you're too damn scared to fight for them. I don't know about any of you, but I plan to fight for my rights if I have to, and I'll let no person, company, or government take away the rights that the Gods gave me at birth and that the United States Constitution garauntees me in writing and law.
--RISCy Business
your company here.
shelby != ford
Unless he has actually levyed war agains the government, or conspired to, or given aid or comfort to a country with which we are at war, he's not being investigated for treason. In any case, it would have to be proven that integrating encryption in a software standard constitued an overt act of treason (as so defined). I think it's rather an uphill battle to show that conspiring to arrange it so that others might have to violate an export restriction to voluntarily participate in a standard rises to that level...
Espionage and antisocial acts are other issues.
It seems that the FBI has realized that performing an investigation against someone can be used as a punitive measure. We are, of course, all aware of their recent "investigation" of the Y2K movie spoof.
:)
The problem is that in many cases, these kind of actions can work. It certainly has done a lot of damage to the ISP who was hosting the Y2K movie. Having been investigated for treason can certainly adversely affect your career and personal life. I imagine it would also completely eliminate any chance that you could get a job with a security clearance.
Normally, only the courts can declare punishment for an offense, but in these cases, going to the courts may be completely unnecessary for the FBI's purposes, even if it stood a snowball's chance in hell of actually making it into a court proceeding.
Of course if they do it too much, it could backfire, since not having been investigated means you haven't done anything interesting
From the Constitution of the United States, Article III, Section 3:
....
"Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overy Act, or on Confession in open Court."
In other words, "challenging authority and laws" is in no sense treason according to the Constitution. It's possible that the FBI wish to refer not to treason but to "sedition", which is (roughly) the "crime" of speaking against the government. Obviously, the First Amendment has a lot to say about the legal status of that "crime"!
The status of sedition under U.S. law has in fact varied quite a lot. There have been several anti-sedition laws, from the Sedition Act of 1798 to the Smith Act of 1940, and so on. However, the prevailing sense of the Supreme Court has been that unless a speech act creates "clear and present danger" of lawless behavior, it is protected by the First Amendment from being held as seditious.
In short, the FBI seem to be on extremely shaky ground here. However, I am not a lawyer, and the article is rather vague on what the charges being investigated actually are. So let's wait and see what comes of this one
[begin transmission] ...OK, so if after all that, they still don't wanna build in support for CALEA into the network policies, I know! We'll just have anyone who disagrees executed for treason until the only people left alive are our supporters, and then support for CALEA will be unanimous!
Phase 1: Send up a trial balloon...
Phase 2: Bully the vendors...
Phase [CENSORED]:
[end transmission]
It's a joke, a joke you bastards! A jo
NO CARRIER
Back in 1991, the FBI was still probably not clear on the concept that they would be laughed out of court if they tried to interfere with international standards bodies such as the IETF --- the U.S. Government has recognized the IETF as an international standards body. Some of the quotes from the FOIA'ed file make it clear that this was the focus of their investigation:
"(blacked out)stated that he believes the PPP is legal technology. However, if the government is attempting to restrict the dissemination of authentication protocols, he believes it is too late. It is like locking the barn after the horse has escaped (per (balcked out)).... (more blacked out stuff) .... In summary, (blacked out) does not believe Simpson has engaged in breaking United States export laws regarding the export of cryptographic devices or is interested in violating such laws at the behest of a foreign power."
I very much doubt that the FBI would be wasting time with such investigations today, and certainly I would doubt that any such case would be allowed come to court --- if they tried, you can be sure that there would be plenty of support from the net, and there's a very good chance they would lose the case. Much of the current force of the export control regulations come from Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt. If they let a case come to trial, there's a very good chance they could lose on first amendment grounds, and that's the last thing they would want.
Now while I am as staunch a defender of free speech as anyone, William Simpson was under investigation for about nine months because he was in a position to potentially break U.S. export laws against exportation of strong encryption. While I may not like the fact that we have such laws, Simpson could have helped to include "unexportably" strong encryption in an internet standard that would surely be exported.
Note: I do not support restrictions on encryption, nor to I support mandated back doors. I do not support unwarrented investigations of U.S. citizens (or any other people for that matter.) However, I also do not support getting hysterical over a six-year old dead issue just because the subject has had his Freedom of Information Act request fufilled.
the supplied article on NTSecurity seems to be complete heresay. Like NTsecurity heard from ZDTV which heard from IETF. If it were straighter from the horses mouth it could be the basis for an intellegent conversation. But too many details are excluded to be able to formulate an opinion on what's occuring.
For instance, is he being investigated because of his suggestion for the inclusion of encryption in PPP, or have other things occured? That detail seems to be skimmed over and then forgotten. Like: "he advocated encryption and then he got investigated for treason..."
Did he, through his advocay, publish PGP or other software on his website for download to non-US citizens? If yes, then, well, as stupid as everyone thinks it is, he would have broken the law. Note, that that's pure speculation. But I honestly don't our government would waste the resources to investigate someone for treason because of a suggestion! Let's be a little more realistic, please. There have to be other factors at work...
And if there are, we need to know what they are before we go "oh, evil FBI cracks down on innocent ciziten joe...". It's too easy to jump to a conclusion - one way or the other - without presentation of all the facts.
If my very slight hypothesis is correct, and there were other factors at work aside from his suggestion, then i'll go on to say that if you don't like a law, you can't just go break it and say it's okay because it's a dumb law. You need to get it changed. Vote. Voice yourself. But don't try to be a martyr unless you're sure it will work right.
Since PPP has been around for quite a while, this means this particular investigation is quite old. People are talking like it's directly related to the Y2K movie thing that recently happened and was reported on here.
I think we should all take a step back from this and relax.
...phil
...phil
"For a list of the ways which technology has failed to improve our quality of life, press 3."
Korea was a "police action". Vietnam wasn't even that - just a response to an "incident". Desert Storm and the like were UN actions for which we provided aid.
We aren't at war unless war has been declared - which takes a 2/3 vote of the Senate. We don't have "enemies" within the meaning of the Treason definition unless we are at war.
That's why Jane Fonda is still at large, despite her visit to, and propaganda for, North Vietnam during the Vietnam Hootenany.
Now it only takes one side to "levy war", so don't try nuking DC. But until a war is declared you can give aid and comfort to anyone you want. You might be breaking laws. But you aren't committing Treason.
But if you do something the current operators of the government dislike, don't be surprised if members of the Executive Branch harass you. Governments generally have a dismal record when it comes to getting their employees to actually obey or correctly interpret their own laws.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way