[free-sklyarov] Hrmm

[Ethan Straffin]

> http://www.cnn.com/2001/TECH/internet/07/24/cyber.sheriff.idg/index.html

I find the following section of this article particularly disturbing:

>The San Jose CHIP unit, Ashcroft said, has proven its value in a number
>of cases, including that of a hacker now serving an 18-month sentence for
>violating the computer systems of the Department of Defense, NASA and
>other U.S. agencies. ... Another led to guilty pleas from individuals who
>were selling copyrighted software over the Internet via a Web site called
>"software-inc.com," and led to what is believed to be the first-ever
>criminal forfeiture of a Web site in an intellectual-property case. 
>
>"When the site becomes the official property of the United States
>government, prosecutors intend to keep it up on the Internet," Ashcroft
>said. "Visitors will see a warning that the site has been seized by law
>enforcement and get the clear message that cybercrime carries real
>penalties for offenders."

IMHO what Ashcroft is celebrating here is a significant negative
development, and yet another ominous step toward totalitarianism.  
Federal and state asset forfeiture is one of the most bald-facedly
unconstitutional processes to come down the pike in the past few decades.  
It was originally intended to deal with the inconvenient fact that drug
prohibition creates vast profits for drug traffickers, which allows them
to pay for elaborate defense strategies.  Asset forfeiture short-circuits
this inconvenience by allowing the government to seize any assets that it
believes have been used in connection with a crime -- a definition which
today is used so loosely that the feds can take pretty much anything you
own (including financial assets) without any regard whatsoever for due
process, and without even necessarily charging you with a crime.

It's been my prediction that we would start to see asset forfeiture
expanding out of the realm of drug-related (and occasionally
weapons-related) cases and into the arenas of high-tech and white-collar
crime -- a development which now appears to be very much a part of the
Ashcroft agenda.  It should trouble us all that the government can seize a
domain it doesn't like, as well as the hardware that drives it, and
"repurpose" it to deliver law-enforcement propaganda.  IMHO this attack on
the Fourth Amendment deserves our opposition every bit as much as the
DMCA's attack on the First.

For more information on asset forfeiture, I recommend Forfeiture Endangers
American Rights at www.fear.org.

Ethan
--
"The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to
think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing
superstitions and taboos.  Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion
that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, and
intolerable."                                           -- H.L. Mencken