http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/raisethefist/
Search Warrant and
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On January 24, 2002, the FBI raided the home of Sherman Martin Austin, the 18 year old owner/operator of the anarchist web site RaisetheFist.com. A few days later, Mark Burdett published an email interview in which Austin stated:
"They [the FBI] told me the main reason for the raid was because of the content on the site, and they wanted to see who was looking at it. This was not the main reason. It was an excuse. The alledged content which they claim they were so concerned about is from the Reclaim Guide."
I have mirrored the Reclaim Guide at Carnegie Mellon.
The search warrant does refer to the file reclaim.html and several associated files. But it also cites evidence that Austin has hacked into computer systems, defaced web sites, launched denial-of-service attacks against other computer systems, and operated a web site for selling stolen stereos. A subsequent Newsbytes article revealed that Austin has admitted to defacing web sites in order to spread his political message. That alone seems adequate reason to arrest and charge him.
I'm a registered Republican, so needless to say, I don't agree with Sherman Austin's politics, much less his actions. But I'm curious why the FBI would include this Reclaim Guide as part of their justification for raiding a private citizen's home and carting off all his computers and political literature. Since when is it illegal to write about explosives? According to the search warrant, Austin was violating Title 18, United States Code, Section 842(p), which makes it unlawful to:
A well-written government report on the constitutionality of this statute has been made available by Cryptome, along with some background information on how Senators Feinstein and Biden got the statute passed back in 1997.
- "teach or demonstrate to any person the making or use of an explosive, a destructive device, or a weapon of mass destruction, or
- to distribute by any means information pertaining to ... the manufacture or use of an explosive, destructive device, or weapon of mass destruction ...
- with the intent that the teaching, demonstration, or information be used for ...
- or with the knowledge that the person intends to use it for ...
- an activity that constitutes a Federal crime of violence."
Since I personally do not advocate any type of violent behavior, and my intent in mirroring the Reclaim Guide is not to facilitate such behavior, but rather to encourage public scrutiny of the government's application of the statute, my mirror does not appear to violate the statute.
The public scrutiny I desire has in fact occurred, as can be seen in discussion board postings at Slashdot and Cryptome, for example.
I think the statute is silly. It cannot be an effective deterrent to dissemination of information about explosives, because you can purchase plenty of good info at Amazon.com, such as Home Workshop Explosives, or Improvised Munitions Black Book. And don't forget William Powell's 30+ year old Anarchist Cookbook; be sure to read the this Salon article and the author's own comments posted on the Amazon page. For weapons of mass destruction (chemical and biological), Amazon offers Silent Death, Second Edition, the reference supposedly used by the Aum cult.
Public libraries are also much better sources of explosives information than the pathetic Reclaim Guide. This does not mean the above statute has no use, however. It can be used to pile additional charges on someone whom the government wants to prosecute for other reasons. Whether that is a legitimate purpose for a statute is, I think, worthy of public debate.
Austin's crucial mistake would seem to be putting the explosives information on the same web site as his anarchist protest rhetoric. Publishing the same information on a different site would apparently have shielded him from prosecution.
An interesting feature of the seizure procedure described in the search warrant, pointed out by John Young at Cryptome, is this wording:
iii. Any data that is encrypted and unreadable will not be returned unless law enforcement personnel have determined that the data is not (1) an instrumentality of the offense, (2) a fruit of the criminal activity, (3) contraband, (4) otherwise unlawfully possessed, or (5) evidence of the offense specified above.On what legal basis can the government refuse to return a private citizen's files merely because they are encrypted?
Dr. David S. Touretzky
Computer Science Department Carnegie Mellon University
Pittsburgh, PA 15213-3891
Visit my other free speech projects: Secrets of Scientology, Gallery of CSS Descramblers, Gallery of Adobe Remedies, and Amway/Alticor/Quixtar Sucks!
Court Stuff, from CryptomeCourt Docket2-7-2002: Detention Hearing Transcript |
