Compiled and edited by Frederick Mann
© Copyright 1998 Build Freedom Holdings ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Introduction
Because each individual is unique, has a particular life in respect of family, career,
friends, etc. and also lives in an environment which may be very different from mine, it's
very difficult for me to say just what any particular individual needs to do in order to
seize his or her freedom.
However, what I can say is that if you haven't already done so, you need to acquire the attitude of wanting to live free and the determination to take the necessary steps -- whatever steps may be necessary in your unique situation.
A key realization is that it's not an all-or-nothing issue. To start with, you can find (or create) some relatively minor activity you can perform "outside the system." I'll leave it up to you to find something. The other reports and links on this website may give you some ideas.
You may also want to educate yourself in certain respects. Maybe the rest of this report will help...
THE ECONOMIC MEANS TO FREEDOM
by Frederick Mann
A subscriber of the Advanced Freedom Solutions list wrote:
"I have read the Build Freedom website for some time now, and participated in some of the discussions. I work as a window washer and freelance author.
One opportunity interests me. If I sign up in your downline, would I need to do any marketing of my own in order to derive a residual income? I ask, because: a) I have little time for promotion and b) I am not very skilled or knowledgeable about middle level marketing.
Your site has much information about finance -- the trick for people like me, who lack experience in making money beyond a subsistence level, is to somehow bridge the gap between subsistence level earning and generating large enough cash flows to attain financial freedom. And at the same time, protecting ourselves and our new assets from confiscation/harassment from terrorcrats."
Many people earn "just enough to get by" -- or maybe not quite enough, so they run up credit-card and other debts. It's as if "the system" is designed so the vast majority of people can't escape the trap of having to work long hours to earn their subsistence means.
For many people, the most important step in seizing their freedom is to escape from the "subsistence-level trap." How do you get ahead of the game?
Understand the difference between "proportional income" and "residual income." You get paid $X for washing a window. This could be called "proportional income." You get paid in proportion to the work you do.
With a network-marketing program, you earn "residual income." You do some initial work to enroll your downline. (You may not earn very much in the early stages.)
Eventually, little or even no work may be necessary for substantial earnings to accrue. Then you may want to promote a second or even a third program. This way you can gradually build a substantial income without having to work very much.
To sponsor others you have to do some marketing or selling. The most important aspect is to discover what parts of the selling process you control and to focus on improving and expanding these parts.
You shouldn't be concerned whether any particular person signs up or not. You can't control that. Your only concern is presenting the program, answering questions, and inviting those interested to participate in the conference call.
To improve your selling skills I highly recommend Dr. Michael Hewitt-Gleeson's courses at http://www.sot.com.au/ and his book NewSell.
You may also want to study the Millionaire Reports, the Economic Means to Freedom series, and The Ten Core Concepts of Freedom Technology.
THE COLONIZATION OF CYPHERSPACE
by James Hart
Imagine we could change the laws of physics, so that we could make a material with the following properties: cheap as concrete, and tough enough to withstand the blast of a supernova. Out of this we could make walls, safes, locks, armor light enough to coat vehicles and wear as clothes, envelopes impervious to snooping or tampering, and a wide variety of other devices to defeat violence against individuals and their property. The security possible for individuals in our current physical world would be put to shame.
I know of a frontier where these kinds of materials are available. Specifically, one-way functions, trapdoor one-way functions, and the other building blocks of cypherspace. Offensive computations could quite literally consume the energies of supernovae, and still not crack codes generated by a lowly Intel chip. These codes are currently available. In the future with quantum cryptography, security against computers and quantum computers of even infinite energies is possible.
Out of these ultratough materials of cypherspace, we can really build a Galt's Gulch: heretofore merely a metaphorical ideal or a hopeless dream about physical security.
There has been a lot of hype about colonizing space, the oceans, and other physical frontiers. American culture and perhaps even human instinct equate freedom with the physical frontier. Some government bureaucracy finds 1% water at a lunar pole and some libertarians, recalling those old entertaining industrial-era yarns about a dreamy future on the Moon (a.k.a. heaven), go gaga. I have more water, and more of almost everything else useful, in my literal backyard!
Supposedly, mere physical distance, the mere increase of a constant factor in the energy and time needed to get across the oceans or into space, is supposed to provide some protection from the thieves and parasites who first steal our livelihoods through taxes, then steal our very lives by harassing practitioners of advanced medicine. But the increased cost of a physical barrier is the same for both the offense and the defense. Such a barrier offers no significant improvement to those wishing to defend their freedoms. Only a barrier of great asymmetry, where defense is vastly more efficient than offense, turns the tides towards freedom. Freedom in cypherspace, first for our communications, then for our financial transactions, then for the free flow of research and services from unlocatable medical laboratories.
An extropian evolves beyond the stage of entropic griping or whining about our current condition of human slavery, and beyond the stage of participation in the human tribal rituals of political bickering. We evolve beyond the naive belief that what passes for "politics" in our public-school-brainwashed and licensed-media-saturated culture constitutes any sort of effective political action. An extropian evolves beyond wishful thinking inspired by those entertaining TV escape fantasy shows. We transform our human desires to conquer the physical frontier into transhuman action which conquers the secure frontier of cypherspace. We seize the liberty at hand! I salute those extropians working on the colonization of cypherspace, and encourage many others with a knack for computers, mathematics, law, or business to join in. Ad BlackNet Per Perspera!
[For information on Extropians, see http://www.extropy.com/~exi/.]
SEIZE YOUR FREEDOM
(This section is based on a flyer written by the mysterious author "J.E.T.")
So you want to be free? Then become free! All the freedom is yours which you are able to seize!
How do you seize freedom? By avoiding, evading, escaping, discouraging, overpowering, destroying, or otherwise frustrating anyone who initiates force or threat of force against you.
Do you beg for freedom? -- "But the oppressors ignore my pleas for freedom," you complain. Do you expect them to set you free? (Graffiti in a Las Vegas shopping mall: SLAVES NEED MASTERS.)...
As long as you obey their rules, no matter how onerous, and pay their taxes, no matter how burdensome -- why should they set you free? -- why should they relinquish the easy life of a parasite?
"And the oppressors dupe my neighbors who are confused, unaware, and apathetic," you protest. Do you expect them not to tame their flocks? The herdsman can milk only tame cows: the shearer can shear only tame sheep: the tyrant can drive only obedient slaves...
"...We must educate -- teach increasing numbers our values and ideas," others shout. "And some day truth will prevail and evil will be banished from the earth." But, ...this will take time -- much time. So how shall you live the only life you will ever have? And how many followers can you attract and hold if you offer only visions of a paradise for their great grandchildren?
"I do want freedom," you cry. "But there is no way to get it now -- no chance to elect, no means to revolt, and no place to go."
I reply: If you want freedom, seize it!
"But my oppressors are organized into a powerful government, an omnipotent state..." you object... I reply: However... They are individuals. They cannot be everywhere. They cannot see everything. They cannot understand everything. They cannot do everything. You do not have to obey them... Discover ways to avoid their extortions... Convert your wealth into forms you can conceal.. Make yourself difficult to find.
"But that is too much trouble," you complain... "I would rather... do everything they demand -- and maybe, oh maybe, they will leave me alone just a little." Then tag along with the sheep to the slaughter, you who expect freedom on a silver platter. For how long can you appease the tyrant who will demand more and more, until he owns you completely?
"And what do we know of this libertarian utopia that some of you dream of? In every land of which we hear, there are some who covet the lives and creations of others -- predators who rob and enslave the weak, the foolish and the cowardly. And when have they failed to recruit millions to vote for them, finance them, and work for them as humble agents and police?"
Freepersons [sometimes] go about like tigers -- armed and ready for self defense... [and sometimes] go about like foxes -- inconspicuous and ready to hide....
However, in almost every land, those with the courage to assert their freedom seldom need to fight or hide -- for the predators live off the easy prey... ...all the freedom is yours which you are able to seize!
TRADITIONAL PRIVACY JOINS THE DIGITAL REVOLUTION
by Duncan Frissell
I. Introduction
In 1948, when George Orwell needed a title for his dystopian novel about Big Brother and
the Ministry of Truth, he reversed the number 48 and entitled it Nineteen Eighty-Four. You
remember Nineteen Eighty-Four: an all powerful government using advanced technology to
establish an unbreakable tyranny over the minds, souls, and bodies of humanity. In the
event, Mr. Orwell was wrong. It hasn't quite worked out that way. Tyrants are looking a
little worse for wear these days. What went wrong? In a word * telecommunications. You'll
hear a lot of talk today about the dangers and possibilities inherent in these new toys
that we play with. But I want to put things in perspective and talk about some traditional
privacy techniques and how they can assist us all in preserving our privacy against
government-led assaults on our liberties.
Even after a century of remarkable changes, we are stuck with the tendency to imagine that the world of the future will be like Today only "More So." The Computer and Network transformation of human society that we are exploring today is revolutionary. It will bring many changes that are impossible for us to imagine. The reason things are a little hard to predict is that the main effect of all of the changes we are seeing is to give more and more power and more and more choices to individuals.
If you doubt this, consider this fact: William Jefferson Blythe Clinton is not vastly more powerful than was Louis XIV. Both of these men could destroy a city such that no stone was left standing upon stone. However, the "peasants" of today's rich countries are much more powerful than the chained serfs of 18th Century France. The average American or Brit of today can take two week's salary and buy a computer more powerful than all of the electronic computers that existed on earth in 1955. Or he can take that same money and jet anywhere on earth at almost the speed of sound.
These new powers, multiplied by all the choices that can now be made by billions of individuals, are causing control problems for the world's governments and prediction problems for all of us.
One way of trying to get a handle on this future is to talk about the techniques that have traditionally been employed by individuals to secure their private choices * their privacy, their independence. This can offer us guidance as to what may happen when everyone comes to recognize that they are free.
One hears a lot of complaints about invasions of privacy these days. But most of the complainers are looking to others to guard their privacy. If you are really worried about your privacy, there are plenty of things you can do to secure it for yourself.
Whatever your personal views about privacy, it is important that you know what is possible now and in the future. Because you can be assured that as the technologies we are talking about today become available, more and more people will use them.
As I talk about some traditional privacy techniques, I want you to keep in mind the sort of future in which these methods will be used.
II. The Fibersphere
In a forthcoming book, the American commentator George Gilder calls this future the
Fibersphere * the networked world in which communications is so cheap as to be
almost free. A world in which anyone who wants to can communicate privately with anyone
else and one in which no outsider can read, never mind block, that communication. It will
be a very different world indeed. How will people use some of the capabilities that other
speakers here today have discussed? Let's see what they've done in the past.
III. Privacy Techniques
In the seven decades since the growth of the modern interventionist state, people have
been developing and deploying many techniques to preserve their privacy. These powerful
planning techniques have offered many individuals and companies the opportunity to
arbitrage the effects of personal and financial regulation by the nation state.
A. Concealment as a Privacy Technique
The basic privacy technique is that of concealment * not telling others that information
which you wish to safeguard.
1. Keeping Secrets
Much of what we are talking about here today deals with our fears of a loss of privacy,
with our concern that the new technologies will destroy this recently won privacy.
Our ability to keep secrets has come and gone through the years. What we think of as privacy is a fairly recent phenomenon. There was very little privacy in the 14th century in an English castle crammed with retainers (or in an English village in the 20th century for that matter). Privacy grew with bourgeois society and with the city. Getting lost in the crowd and living in small family households increased our concept of privacy.
2. Private Communications
It used to be that we were at least able to communicate privately with those we met in
person. And, of course we could only conduct private conversations in person.
We could also more or less trust the privacy of the contents of our letters posted in sealed envelopes.
With the telegraph and telephone and radio came the ability to speak with people thousands of miles away. But it created the opportunity for others to listen in with wiretaps and electronic bugs.
Computer networks now allow inexpensive long distance communication. But they have proved to be rather insecure. However, the spread of military- grade encryption enabled by powerful computers will bring back private communications. In addition, the sheer volume of communications will make it very hard for unintended eavesdroppers to filter out the specific messages they are trying to intercept. Here's an example of the sort of thing we can expect:
3. Telephone Forwarding
It's December 1st, in the year 2000 and President-elect Clinton calls me for advice on how
to deal with the tax compliance problems her administration will face. The White House
switchboard places a call to my communications server (think of it as a distributed
process -- a software robot) running on several computers "somewhere on the
nets." This is, of course, a digital phone call and travels to my communication
server as a series of groups of zeros and ones, called packets.
My communications server (a combination answering machine, electronic mailbox, and receptionist) handles all of my indirect contacts with the rest of the world. Hillary's call passes the criteria I have programmed into my server and so is forwarded to my location somewhere on earth. The path that the packets that make up this call take is convoluted and passes through a number of commercial remailers. These remailers mix the packets with other genuine and phony voice and data communication streams, then readdress them, and eventually forward them to me (but with such speed that neither Hillary nor I notice the lag). If done properly, these remailers will allow me to have a real- time conversation with the President-Elect of the US without her being able to trace the call, even if she were to employ the entire resources of the US government.
The phone call I've just described is an example of how networks can enhance what I call locational ambiguity.
B. Locational Ambiguity as a Privacy Technique
About 25 years ago, a friend of mine faced a problem. He had received a "job
offer" from the United States government. They had invited him to visit scenic
Vietnam and interact with the native cultures. In fact, they insisted on it. When John, a
New Yorker, received his notice to report for a draft physical exam, he immediately moved
to California. He then wrote his New York draft board saying that he was in California and
had no funds to travel to New York for his physical. After a few months, his records were
transferred to a California draft board, and he received another notice to report for a
draft physical. He immediately moved to Texas and repeated the process. He finally got a
letter from the Texas draft board which not only ordered him to report for induction but
also ordered him to stay in Texas. He immediately moved to Tennessee and sent a letter of
regret to the Texas draft board apologizing for having already left Texas.
Repeat until end of war.
Disguising your actual location is convenient for a number of reasons beyond avoiding conscription. Aside from being a shield against government intrusion, locational ambiguity lets you take advantage of the varying legal regimes. It confirms one major advantage that we all have over the Nation State - we can move and the State (absent war and an invading army) can not.
Note the effect of disguising your true residency -- governments treat residents very differently from non-residents. Residents are taxed, regulated, counted, and tracked. They are called for Jury Duty, sometimes prohibited from owning gold or foreign currencies, or conscripted. On the other hand, visitors are treated much more leniently. In America, foreigners can do all sorts of things that citizens cannot and are free from many of the burdens. The message is clear. If you want to be well-treated, be a guest rather than a resident. Residential ambiguity helps you keep your exact status fuzzy. And there are several ways of achieving this ambiguity.
1. Accommodation Addresses
The most frequent personal question any of us is asked is, "What is your name,
address, and phone number. Many of the dossiers that are built up about us are based on
our address.
Traditionally, one would secure one's privacy and keep one's physical location uncertain by using an accommodation address. These so-called private mail boxes or mail receiving services, have proliferated in recent years in America.
Using accommodation addresses, one can not only protect oneself from problems like, say, cyborg killers tracking you down, as Arnold Schwarzeneger did to the poor woman in The Terminator. But this method also can handle more mundane annoyances such as those from salesmen or from the Inland Revenue.
Small businesses can use a mail receiving service to show a prestigious address that differs from their actual address, or perhaps to establish a presence in another state or another country.
By changing your address, without having to move, or keeping your exact address uncertain through the use of mail receiving services, you can reduce the harm to your privacy involved in the misuse of your actual address.
2. Telephone Answering Services and Voice Mail as another form of ambiguity.
In most cities in the US today, I can pick up the phone, call a computer- based voice mail
service and get a unique phone number and account in 5 minutes. The disadvantage of a
traditional answering service is that everyone can tell it is an answering service. Voice
mail avoids this problem. This voice mail account sounds just like a normal telephone
answering machine. I record my greeting and can change it any time I like. I can dial in
and retrieve my messages. This is a real world example using today's technology of the
sort of future communications server I described above.
3. Future Locational Ambiguity
In a very short time, it will be very hard to tell exactly who you are dealing with, where
people are, or what they are doing. Networks care little about such questions. From this
room, I can easily and cheaply connect to and use computers in Japan or Australia and do
work or import data. By shattering time and distance, networks weaken the geographical
bonds that governments depend upon to exert their controls.
While governments are weakened by computers and networks, private bureaucracies also find themselves increasingly transformed.
C. Multiplication of Entities as a Privacy Technique
The formation of independent business entities is a privacy planning technique as old as
that one great contribution of Mercantilism -- the corporation. The ability to have an
independent entity (an artificial person) under your control but legally separate from you
has always been very convenient for enhancing privacy.
During the 1920s, Alfred Carl Fuller became one of America's first black millionaires because his thousands of door-to-door salesmen and millions of customers never knew that the Fuller Brush Company was owned by a black man.
1. Business Explosion
As capitalism progressed, the number of types of business forms has exploded.
Partnerships, trusts, corporations, limited partnerships, limited liability corporations
are common in today's business world.
2. Declining Corporate Size
As the number of business enterprises has grown in recent years, in the US and Europe,
average company size has plummeted as computers make it easier to shop around for the
goods and services that you need for a business project. If I can hire a 747 or a hundred
temporary packaging engineers with a few phone calls, I have less need to keep a large
staff on site. And if the sort of work you need done can be done over the nets, the people
you hire or contract with can live anywhere in the world.
3. Everyone an Entrepreneur
The future of computers and networks will make things even looser. It will be possible to
throw together virtual corporations on a project basis to get something done. One can also
create and manage many different sorts of entities with ease.
One can already buy shelf companies in a few minutes using credit cards over the telephone. Imagine what sorts of instant entities can be created in a networked world. It will be possible to use smart computer software to create synthetic business entities as easily as securities dealers have created synthetic securities. Those who work for these temporary entities will be able to meet together using future virtual reality interfaces, even though they may be thousands of miles apart.
4. The Securitization of Life
I call this multiplication entities the "securitization of life." First there
were stocks and bonds. Then there were futures contracts and options. Now there are
options on futures contracts, futures contracts on options, and derivatives too complex to
describe.
Computers and networks make it so easy to create new forms of business relationships and ownership that the ability of regulators to regulate them will be severely compromised. A good example of this problem is the whole area of financial services.
D. Foreign Banking and Financial Services as a Privacy Technique
Everyone here is familiar with the stories of "foreign bank accounts." Financial
services are what we are really talking about when we discuss tax havens and the
traditional financial privacy community. People have been moving some of their financial
affairs to other countries for years. They have, traditionally, had many reasons to do so.
1. Reduced Political Risk
Many of those who choose to bank in jurisdictions in which they do not live do so to
reduce their risks of losing their money to their government or to lawsuits. They have
considered it important to avoid putting all their eggs in one basket. It is always safer
to keep some of your wealth in countries in which you do not live.
2. Enhanced Services
Others have chosen to deposit funds in other countries' banks to secure services not
available at home. It is still very difficult for Russians to have a bank account, so they
have been frantically opening accounts in Western banks. If you live in the US and want an
account denominated in a foreign currency, the only practical way to do so is to open a
foreign bank account.
3. Choice of Tax Jurisdiction
Obviously, the holders of foreign accounts have also sought friendlier tax jurisdictions.
Whether legally or illegally, they have placed their funds in tax haven bank accounts
where no local tax liability accrues and where they may be able to minimize their tax
liabilities back home.
4. Network Banking
When I talk about the future markets on the networks, people always say things like,
"What can you sell over a fiber optic cable?" This failure of imagination can be
avoided if we look at some of the things that are already being bought and sold over the
nets. Financial services are the easiest to be transformed by the new computer and
telecommunications technology and the single easiest "digital service" to sell
over the nets.
In fact, this is already happening. The international traders in securities, foreign currencies, and derivatives have developed a transnational computer linked market for their "goods." Take the forex market. It has tripled in size since 1986 reaching a daily volume of one trillion dollars. The reason for the collapse of the EECs Exchange Rate Mechanism is the simple fact that the world's governments who together possess about one trillion dollars in foreign exchange reserves are helpless to control an international market whose daily volume alone equals their entire level of reserves.
In the past, only wealthy individuals and companies could take advantage of the tax planning and other financial benefits of offshore banking. Within a few years, sophisticated international financial services using strong encryption technology and the sort of anonymous forwarding I've spoken of before will be as close as everyone's networked home computer. This will render financial regulation a real challenge for governments. This will happen because the real power of networks lies in the fact that they make "action at a distance" easy.
E. Expatriation as a Privacy Technique
When one feels hassled in a particular community, a natural response is to move away. When
you are moving away from a nation, it is called expatriation.
When we think of traditional expatriates, we think of someone like Marc Rich who fled the US in the late 1970s to avoid federal prosecution. With his new Spanish Citizenship and hundreds of millions of dollars, he currently resides in Switzerland. The Feds had accused him of profiting from Jimmy Carter's price controls during the Oil Shock of the 1970s. He bought "old oil" which was subject to price controls and magically transformed it into "new oil" which was not. Interestingly enough, since he left the US, his firm Clarendon Ltd. continues to sell copper and nickel to the US Treasury to mint coins.
The new expatriates who will be coming along in the next few years will be able to employ ever more sophisticated technology to accomplish some remarkable feats.
1. Permanent Traveler (PT)
An ancient privacy-enhancing technique is to become a permanent traveler or PT. From the
gypsies of Europe's past to temporary residents of the South of France today, PTs have
always gained partial exemption from the geographically based controls imposed by the
nation state. In recent years, a fair number of people have intentionally become PTs.
Note for example, that the US taxes the income earned by its citizens or permanent residents no matter where on earth that income is earned. Even that quite strict regime, however, does not claim to tax the earnings of Brits or Germans dodging the gunfire to visit Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida.
In the same way, if I, a US passport holder, am traveling in France and Germany while setting up a leveraged buy-out in the US using my cellphone and my laptop, I am not violating the laws of those countries concerning work by foreigners without a work permit. And I have no effective French or German tax liability for the profits derived from these activities.
The significance of these facts today is that it will soon be possible to manage a Fortune 500 corporation, direct a "film", perhaps even perform surgery while traveling hither and yon about the world. That will make it rather difficult for the revenue authorities of the OECD countries.
What happens when some future version of Madonna notices that she can eliminate tax liability by expatriating herself while still selling her services over the nets?
2. Virtual Expatriation
Now not everyone feels like moving overseas. The disadvantage of traditional expatriation
is that you had to leave home and move to a strange land where people may not even speak
your language. In addition, you have to leave all of your social and business contacts
behind. Also, it usually meant that only wealthy individuals with very portable jobs could
take advantage of expatriation. Modern networks improve this situation by making possible
virtual expatriation over the nets, even if they're working at home.
The South of France or Thorshavn in the Faroe Islands or Peoria, Illinois are right next door to each other on a network. With appropriate encryption techniques, large numbers of people will be able to work from anywhere to anywhere. This will mean in practice that they can remain physically in a high-tax country while they conduct their business "offshore" with lower effective tax liabilities. Everyone who cares to be will, in some sense, be international.
F. Internationalization as a Privacy Technique
The international realm has unique legal characteristics. While I can't advertise
unregistered securities or foreign bank accounts within the US, I can advertise them in
international publications. The regulations which govern specific actions taken in
international transactions are very ambiguous.
The thing about current and future computer networks is that they constitute an international publication. To a network, nationals are foreigners, foreigners are nationals and everyone is international. For example, someone outside the US can use the Internet to import controlled cryptographic technology from the US, in spite of the fact that it's a violation of US law for anyone in the US to export that technology. Non Americans can take advantage of the First Amendment to the US Constitution to read and publish materials over the nets that might be illegal in their home country.
Living in an international world means in some sense living outside of the realm of the nation state. Absent the imposition of a world government (which would seem to run counter to the direction the world is currently heading) things are bound to get quite a bit looser over the next few years.
IV. Conclusion
This loosening is a matter of concern for many people. Both law enforcement personnel and
the general public worry that the new technology will be used for pornography, for
organized criminal activity, or for terrorism. This is not a problem unique to computers
and telecommunications, however. Many different sorts of modern technology have increased
the capabilities of individuals to do good or evil. The advantage of the network
revolution is that -- unlike other technologies -- it offers the tools to solve the
problems it creates. On the networks we can filter out unwanted communications. We can
build digital webs of trust so that we can live and work only with people who recognize
the rights of others. Traditional methods of social control will not work well over the
nets. We will have to develop new forms of social interaction that emphasize individual
responsibility and self control.
And what can we call this new form of social organization growing on the nets and in the modern fluid business environment? When two or more people can meet together and communicate freely and privately without interference by outsiders, they can trade -- they can form a market. If this trade on the nets is made free from even the possibility of external regulation, what we have is a free market and a free society.
Delivered at the First European Conference on Computers, Freedom and Privacy. London. November 1993.
DON'T TALK TO COPS
by Robert W. Zeuner, Member of the New York State Bar
The following article is from a leaflet that has been distributed by the Libertarian Party in New Jersey. Written by an attorney, it deals with the subject of talking to police or other government agents.
"GOOD MORNING! My name is investigator Holmes. Do you mind answering a few simple questions?" If you open your door one day and are greeted with those words, stop and think! Whether it is the local police or the FBI at your door, you have certain legal rights of which you ought to be aware before you proceed any further.
In the first place, when the law enforcement authorities come to see you, there are no "simple questions." Unless they are investigating a traffic accident, you can be sure that they want information about somebody. And that somebody may be you!
Rule Number one to remember when confronted by the authorities is that there is no law require you to talk with the police, the FBI, or the representative of any other investigative agency. Even the simplest questions may be loaded and the seemingly harmless bits of information which you volunteer may later become vital links in a chain of circumstantial evidence against you or a friend.
Do not invite the investigator into your home! Such an invitation not only gives him the opportunity to look around for clues to your lifestyle, friends, reading material, etc., but also tends to prolong the conversation. And the longer the conversation, the more chance there is for a skilled investigator to find out what he wants to know.
Many times a police officer will ask you to accompany him to the police station to answer a few questions. In that case, simply thank him for the invitation and indicate that you are not disposed to accept it at that time. Often the authorities simply want to photograph a person for identification purposes, a procedure which is easily accomplished by placing him in a private room with a two-way mirror at the station, asking him a few innocent questions, and then releasing him.
If the investigator becomes angry at your failure to cooperate and threatens you with arrest, stand firm. He cannot legally place you under arrest or enter your home without a warrant signed by a judge. If he indicates that he has such a warrant, ask to see it. A person under arrest or located on premises to be searched, generally must be shown a warrant if he requests it and must be given a chance to read it.
Without a warrant, an officer depends solely upon your helpfulness to obtain the information he wants. So, unless you are quite sure of yourself, don't be helpful.
Probably the wisest approach to take to a persistent investigator is simply to say: "I'm quite busy now. If you have any questions that you feel I can answer, I'd be happy to listen to them in my lawyer's office. Goodbye!" Talk is cheap. But when that talk involves the law enforcement authorities, it may cost you, or someone close to you, dearly.
P.S. "This leaflet has been printed as a public service by individuals concerned with the growing role of authoritarianism and police power in our society. Please feel free to copy or republish."
(This file was found elsewhere on the Internet and uploaded to the Patriot FTP site by S.P.I.R.A.L., the Society for the Protection of Individual Rights and Liberties. E-mail: alex@spiral.org)
HOW TO BREAK THE LAW
by Duncan Frissell
For a fair number of readers, the day may come when the men in the funny suits walk up to you, ask if you are you, and then exercise their power of arrest. For those without much experience in getting arrested, let me tell you what in general it will be like (details may vary).
But first let's review arrest etiquette. Arrest etiquette can be complicated for the arresting officers but it is easy for the arrestee. There are only two rules: 1) Keep your mouth shut and 2) Cooperate physically with the arrest. Following rule two will help preserve your kidneys, limbs, and skull but following rule one is the most important.
During the first two years after your arrest, there are only four words that you should speak to minions of the State in an official capacity:
"I want a lawyer"
Say nothing else. You gain NO benefits by saying things to the cops and the prosecutors for free. If your lawyer cuts a deal for you, you can talk in exchange for something but once you speak you can't take the words back. Lawyers are constantly amazed and entertained by the things their clients tell the cops. Don't say anything. It's stupid.
In The Hacker Crackdown - Law and Disorder on the Electronic Frontier; Bruce Sterling's account of the Legion of Doom/911 Document/Steve Jackson Games busts of 1990, he reports that all the busted hackers had no clue about how to be arrested. They could reprogram telco switches with ease but they didn't know the basic rules of how to hack the criminal justice system so watch it.
Once you are placed under arrest, you will probably be handcuffed and transported to a booking facility where you will be photographed, fingerprinted, and perhaps given a free set of clothing (these days, usually in orange). Then you will be put in a temporary holding cell with many other interesting people. Your fellow residents will ask you why you've been arrested, and when you tell them that you've taken a fall for operating an outlaw BBS, they'll probably laugh. Eventually, you'll be brought up before a judge or magistrate who will set your bail. If you don't make bail you will be sent to a longer term facility, perhaps a city prison, to await trial.
While you're waiting, you can review all the things that you should have done before breaking the law. Most free thinkers can come up with a lot of reasons for violating the law at one time or another. Just breathing is often sufficient. Like any other semi-hazardous activity, careful preparation is the key. The purpose of this article is not to tell you how not to get caught --- such strategies vary with the laws violated. No, this article is aimed at providing you with an outline of how to prepare for getting caught. No matter how careful you are in the planning of your criminal career, things can go wrong. Thinking about the possibility of failure in advance may encourage you to improve your over-all strategy and at least will diminish the damage that the authorities can do to you.
Psychological preparation is absolutely the most vital task that you must undertake. Before you decide to break the law you must have convinced yourself that the State is wrong and that, for you, the risk of punishment is less significant than the benefits from violating the law. There often is a good foundation for this undertaking, as many people believe that most States are without much moral justification and amount to criminal gangs in themselves. So, at least on a philosophical level, breaking the law might be fairly easy for some of us to do at one time or another. But it is important to realize that when you break the law you are playing it for real, and you might have to face the music. So, while it is obviously better not to be apprehended in the first place, defending yourself psychologically if you do get caught will prove significant, since if the State cannot touch your soul, it gains little by arresting you. With proper contemplation you can build on this knowledge and provide yourself with the best defense against State aggression.
The philosophical advantage held by those of unconventional mind can be contrasted with the situation of some conservative tax rebels whose radicalism is undercut by their belief in the basic legitimacy of the State. I've seen conservatives break down when the courts predictably tossed out their constitutional arguments in tax cases and sentenced them to prison. Their background of basic support for the State apparatus lays a heavy layer of guilt on them once they are labeled criminals. If you intend to break the law be sure, in advance, that you won't be feeling guilty. There will be enough people only too eager to send you on a guilt trip over your activities, without your adding to it.
On a practical level there are many steps you can take to lessen the ability of the State to punish you effectively:
There are loads of legal self-help books out there today. Berkeley's Nolo Press and the ACLU have published books covering business and personal legal problems and the rights of various sorts of people (students, mental patients, gays, etc.).
If you have the time, energy, and money, going to law school might be a good idea. This is particularly true in California where loose eligibility requirements for the State Bar examination have encouraged the proliferation of "free enterprise" law schools and where it is fairly easy to get a legal education in your spare time.
The recent expansion of the seizure laws has filled the pages of USA Today and the big-city dailies with page-long lists of bank accounts and other property seized by law enforcement agents. This represents a civil liberties problem of immense proportions, not to mention a practical problem for would-be law violators.
The best way to protect your property from loss is to hide it where the State cannot find it. Secrecy is your greatest asset. What the State cannot find, it cannot confiscate. You should sell your major personal possessions. If you own your own home or an expensive late-model car, you risk losing these possessions if you are convicted of a crime. Transferring these assets to friends or relatives is not usually good enough. If the party trying to collect money from you can prove that they were given away for less than their real value with intent to hide them from creditors, the transactions can be set aside as fraudulent transfers.
Keep some of your wealth in some anonymous, easily concealable form, such as cash or gold and silver coins. If you feel that you must keep bank accounts, you must arrange it so that no one knows of their existence or can connect them with you. In some cases, even Swiss Bank accounts can be attached by the US authorities if you are convicted of a crime. If you have interest earning accounts in your name in this country, the bank will report the interest earned to the IRS every year (and thus the existence of your account).
What you should do with any bank account in this country is to set it up under a nom de guerre. Even though this is harder than it used to be, it is still possible. However you choose to set up your account, you must arrange it so that statements are not sent to you at your ordinary address. You can request that the bank hold statements for you at the bank itself, or you can use a mail drop of some sort. If you let any evidence of the accounts existence come to you through the mails, you may lose the account if the government opens your mail. The same problem is encountered with securities or other types of "paper" investments --- they tend to generate a lot of mail. And before you risk them, you should make some arrangements to cut off this paper flow.
Of course, you may want to keep a small bank account to pay your day-to-day expenses, but you should only deposit an amount you can afford to lose if the account is attached. But be careful not to leave a paper trail connecting this account with any others you might have. It is probably safest not to keep any significant assets in domestic banks at all. The risks are great, and thanks to the Federal Reserve Board's Open Markets Committee, the benefit of a $US account in a US bank is slight. Foreign bank accounts in strong currencies are another matter. I refer you to Harry Brown's "Complete Guide to Swiss Banks" for a good discussion of bank secrecy in general and foreign bank accounts in particular.
You must avoid investments, such as land, which are on public record and are difficult to hide. Highly liquid investments that are easy to hide are better. Precious metals are a good idea, and you may want to keep a little cash around in case you decide to avoid arrest by fleeing. You can think of different ways of hiding these assets, but remember that the same considerations which apply to bank accounts apply to any safe deposit boxes in which you might want to store valuables.
You should live in a rented dwelling. You don't want your home to be in jeopardy while you are sparring with the government. Car leasing is easy to arrange these days. If you don't own these major assets the government cannot take them. You could also drive an older car. It won't be worth seizing or won't be much of a loss if it is.
Your random personal property is generally safe from attachment, but any valuable collections of books or art will be in jeopardy. So you should liquidate them or take steps to protect them. You can discern the principle involved from this brief outline.
Your major assets are either hidden in liquid form or safely in bank accounts that only you know about and that can not be traced to you. You should not use substantial property that is in your own name. Rent instead. Each state has its own laws which set forth how much and what type of property is exempt from attachment by creditors. Be aware that government creditors have additional collection powers not available to private creditors. Investigate the law in your state to find how much of the property in your possession is safe. It's usually not very much, so plan accordingly.
This may seem like a radical change to your life, but it is probably better to change the nature of your property --- even if the change is inconvenient --- than to take the chance of losing it. Besides, cash, gold, silver, or foreign bank accounts should probably be part of your investment program already.
It is through our jobs that we are controlled. Reluctance to change jobs keeps us in one place, when it might be safer to leave. Lots of social regulation has been piled on the employer/employee relationship. It is there that most of the taxes we pay are collected.
Studies of the effect of criminal conviction on income have shown that the average blue-collar worker regains the same wage earned before imprisonment within one year after release. On the other hand, imprisonment dramatically reduces the wages of white-collar workers, whose jobs are more likely to involve reputation and "credentials". If you are self-employed, you will be in better shape, because you are unlikely to fire yourself for "criminal" activity.
Fortunately, there have been some major changes in employment arrangements for employees as well. There are numerous contract (temp) and consultant positions available today for any type or level of job experience. If you have been the CEO of a Fortune 500 company, there are agencies that will be happy to place you as a temp CEO. Insurance professionals, lawyers, middle-managers, engineers, secretaries, and waiters, all have temp employment agencies that serve them. These jobs can be obtained without background checks and other invasive procedures (urinalysis).
You should also sever your financial ties with the uninvolved. The state can grab the full balance of joint bank accounts, even if the "innocent" partner deposited most of the money. Other forms of joint property may be safer, but the state can still grab your half and convert the other owner into a co-tenant with the government. Keep your money and other property separate. If you've followed the suggestions in Section 2 above, you will already have eliminated most entanglements with others, but such involvements are something to watch out for. As I also pointed about above, don't transfer your property to friends or relatives in anticipation of any criminal activities, since the state can go after it anyway, dragging others into court.
If, after you have done everything you can to protect your mind and your property from the hazards of the criminal justice system, you are arrested anyway, it's not the end of the world. At least you are receiving some personal attention from an otherwise cold and distant government. It is sort of a compliment actually. Not everyone is worth arresting. Most of those arrested aren't worth prosecuting. And most of those prosecuted and convicted aren't worth imprisoning either. In this era of limits, governments can only afford to prosecute and punish a limited number of people.
The government criminal justice enterprise is much less efficient than McDonalds, so chances are they will offer you some sort of deal. They don't want to spend tons of dough to put you away and $60 to $100 thousand a year to keep you there. Watch those deals though. Michael Milkin pleaded guilty and got a sentence as long as he would have gotten if found guilty at trial. Sometimes it's better to take the trial, particularly in political prosecutions.
If you end up having to spend an extended period of time as a guest of the government, you should try to take as relaxed an attitude as possible. It may help to think of the prison experience as a well-earned vacation. After all, you'll finally get the chance to read all those books you've put off reading over the years. You will also get thousands of dollars worth of services yearly, including clothing, meals, lodging, entertainment, medical care (sort of), and education.
Most significantly of all, you will gain first-hand experiences that can help your philosophical and literary development. Many famous writers made good use of their prison time. Also, you will have the opportunity to live in a totalitarian socialist state. In this day and age it's becoming hard to find living examples of totalitarian socialist governments. A few years in prison will encourage you to redouble your efforts to fight such social systems.
Legal Links
FREE underground LEGAL ADVISOR
http://vax1.bemidji.msus.edu/~plumer/Homepage.html
Freedomlaw.com Self-Help Legal Clinic and Sovereign Freedomry home to Liberty's Educational Advocacy Forum
http://freedomlaw.com
LawGuru.com
http://www.lawguru.com/
ID Links
Lockwood Publishing
http://alteredstates.net/lockwood.html
Sacred Covenant Resource Center
http://www.cogent.net/scrc/
General Affidavits & Identity Package
http://www.cascadian.com/CRC/ICR-WebSiteProject/GA&IPHome.html
Scope International Ltd
http://www.britnet.co.uk/scope/
taxBombers' Site & Internet Offshore Center
http://www.privacytools.com/
Loompanics
http://www.loompanics.com/identity.htm
How to Create a Completely New Identity
http://www.xfilm.com/id/mainpage.html
Changing Identity
http://www.jenntech.com/new-id/
Create A New Identity
http://www.infoarea.com/video/identity.htm
Paladin Press
http://www.paladin-press.com/newid.html
Reborn in the USA
http://www.global-money.com/reports/rebornusa.html
New ID
http://www.thespystore.com/newid.htm
The Spy Store
http://www.spy-store.com/books1.html
Prime Videos & Books
http://www.prime-video.com/newid2.html
The Book Shelf
http://www.worldwidemagazines.com/books.html
Digital Rebels
http://www.digitalrebels.com/privacy.html
The Gambler's Bookstore
http://www.gamblerhome.com/noframes/books/unusual_books.html
New ID Personal Freedom and Privacy
http://www.cnw.com/~xbook/freedom.htm
The Spy Shop
http://www.spyshopinc.com/
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