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defend free (fuckin')
speech everywhere!
This was an internet staple
when we first got online. We keep it as an important artifact.
| Also on this page: Chris Lamprecht Minor Threat
THE X-ON CONGRESS:
INDECENT COMMENT ON AN INDECENT SUBJECT
by Steve Russell, American
Reporter Correspondent, former Texas trial judge (1996?)
SAN ANTONIO, Texas -- You motherfuckers in Congress have
dropped over the edge of the earth this time. I understand that
very few of the swarm of high dollar lobbyists around the Telecommunications
Bill had any interest in content regulation -- they were just
trying to get their clients an opportunity to dip their buckets
in the money stream that cyberspace may become -- but the public
interest sometimes needs a little attention. Keeping your eyes
on what big money wants, you have sold out the First Amendment.
First, some basics. If your
children walked by a public park and heard some angry sumbitches
referring to Congress as "the sorriest bunch of cocksuckers
ever to sell out the First Amendment" or suggesting that
"the only reason to run for Congress these days is to suck
the lobbyists' dicks and fuck the people who sent you there,"
no law would be violated (assuming no violation of noise ordinances
or incitement to breach the peace). If your children did not
wish to hear that language, they could only walk away. Thanks
to your heads-up-your-ass dereliction of duty, if they read the
same words in cyberspace, they could call the FBI!
Cyberspace is the village green
for the whole world. It is the same as the village green our
Founders knew as the place to rouse the rabble who became Americans,
but it is also different. Your blind acceptance of the dubious
-- make that dogass dumb -- idea that children are harmed by
hearing so-called dirty words has created some pretty stupid
regulations without shutting down public debate, but those stupid
regulations will not import to cyberspace without consequences
that even the public relations whores in Congress should find
unacceptable.
In cyberspace, there is no
time. A posted message stays posted until it is wiped. Therefore,
there is no way to indulge the fiction that children do not stay
up late or cannot program a VCR.
In cyberspace, there is no
place. The "community standards" are those of the whole
world. An upload from Amsterdam can become a download in Idaho.
By trying to regulate obscenity and indecency on the Internet,
you have reduced the level of expression allowed consenting adults
to that of the most anal retentive blueballed fuckhead U.S. attorney
in the country. The Internet is everywhere you can plug in a
modem. Call Senator Exon an "ignorant motherfucker"
in Lincoln, Nebraska and find yourself prosecuted in Bibleburg,
Mississippi.
In cyberspace, you cannot require
the convenience store to sell Hustler in a white sleeve. The
functional equivalent is gatekeeper software, to which no civil
libertarian has voiced any objection. Gatekeeper software cannot
be made foolproof, but can you pandering pissants not see that
any kid smart enough to hack into a Website is also smart enough
to get his hands on a hard copy of Hustler if he really wants
one?
In cyberspace, there is the
illusion of anonymity but no real privacy. It is theoretically
possible for any Internet server to seine through all messages
for key words (although it seems likely the resulting slowdown
would be noticeable). Perhaps some of you read about America
OnLine's attempt to keep children from reading the word "breast?"
An apparently unforeseen consequence was the shutdown of a discussion
group of breast cancer survivors. Don't you think more kids are
aware of "teat" (pronounced "tit") than of
"breast?" Can skirts on piano legs, er, limbs be far
behind?
But silly shit like this is
just a pimple on the ass of the long-term consequences for politics,
art and education. You have passed a law that will get less respect
than the 55 m.p.h. speed limit dead bang in the middle of the
First Amendment. Indecency is nothing but a matter of fashion;
obscenity is the same but on a longer timeline. This generation
freely reads James Joyce and Henry Miller and the Republic still
stands. The home of the late alleged pornographer D. H. Lawrence
is now a beautiful writers' retreat in the mountains above Taos,
managed by the University of New Mexico.
Universities all have Internet
servers, and every English Department has at least one scholar
who can read Chaucer's English -- but not on the Internet anymore.
Comparative literature classes might read Boccaccio -- but not
on the Internet anymore. What if some U. S. Attorney hears about
Othello and Desdemona "making the beast with two backs"
-- is interracial sex no longer indecent anywhere in the country,
or is Shakespeare off the Internet?
Did you know you can download
video and sound from the Internet? Yes, that means you can watch
other people having sex if that is interesting to you, live or
on tape. Technology can make such things hard to retrieve, but
probably not impossible. And since you have swept right past
obscenity and into indecency, the baby boomers had better keep
their old rock 'n roll tapes off the Internet.
When the Jefferson Airplane
sang "her heels rise for me," they were not referring
to a dance step. And if some Brit explains the line about "finger
pie" in Penny Lane, the Beatles will be gone. All of those
school boards that used to ban "The Catcher in the Rye"
over cussing and spreading the foul lie that kids masturbate
can now go to federal court and get that nasty book kept out
of cyberspace.
But enough about the past.
What about rap music? No, I do not care much for it either --
any more than I care for the language you shitheads have forced
me to use in this essay -- but can you not see the immediate
differential impact of this law by class and race? What is your
defense -- that there are no African-Americans on the Internet,
since they are too busy pimping and dealing crack? If our educational
establishment has any sense at all, they will be trying to see
more teens of all colors on the Internet, because there is a
lot to be learned in cyberspace that has nothing to do with sex.
There are plenty of young people
in this country who have legitimate political complaints. When
you dickheads get done with Social Security, they will be lucky
if the retirement age is still in double digits. But thanks to
the wonderful job the public schools have done keeping sex and
violence out, we have a lot of intelligent kids who cannot express
themselves without indecent language. I have watched lawyers
in open court digging their young clients in the ribs every time
the word "fuck" slipped out.
Let's talk about this fucking
indecent language bullshit. Joe Shea, my editor, does not want
it in his newspaper, and I respect that position. He might even
be almost as upset about publishing this as I am about writing
it. I do use salty language in my writing, but sparingly, only
as a bighammer. Use the fucking shit too fucking much and it
loses its fucking impact -- see what I mean? Fiction follows
different rules, and if you confine your fiction writing to how
the swell people want to see themselves using language, you not
only preclude literary depiction of most people but you are probably
false to the people you purport to depict
Do you remember how real language
used by real people got on the air and in the newspapers? Richard
Nixon, while he was president, speaking in the White House about
official matters. A law professor and a nominee for Supreme Court
Justice arguing about pubic hairs and porno movies during Senate
hearings.
Are these matters now
too indecent for the Internet? How much cleansing will be required
of the online news services? Answer: Enough cleansing to meet
the standard of what is appropriate for a child in the most restrictive
federal judicial district.
This is bullshit -- unconstitutional
bullshit and also bad policy bullshit. To violate your ban on
indecency, I have been forced to use and overuse so-called indecent
language. But if I called you a bunch of goddam motherfucking
cocksucking cunt-eating blue-balled bastards with the morals
of muggers and the intelligence of pond scum, that would be nothing
compared to this indictment, to wit: you have sold the First
Amendment, your birthright and that of your children. The Founders
turn in their graves. You have spit on the grave of every warrior
who fought under the Stars and Stripes.
And what mess of pottage have
you acquired in exchange for the rights of a free people? Have
you cleansed the Internet of even the rawest pornography? No,
because it is a worldwide system. You have, however, handed the
government a powerful new tool to harass its critics: a prosecution
for indecent commentary in any district in the country.
Have you protected one child
from reading dirty words? Probably not, if you understand what
the economists call "substitution" -- but you have
leveled the standards of political debate to a point where a
history buff would not dare to upload some of the Federalist
v. Anti-Federalist election rhetoric to a Website.
Since the lobby reporting requirements
were not law when the censorship discussion was happening, I
hope you got some substantial reward for what you gave up. Thirty
pieces of silver doesn't go far these days.
This article
may be reproduced free forever.
Minor Threat - The Real Story
(taken from
paranoia.com -- This domain has been split up among several people.
You can track down the various threads, to discover, as I did,
that there was way too much ennui in the 90s.) Chris's
story is one which anyone concerned with free speech should be
aware of. At issue is this: Should a person's free speech rights
be removed from them as a punishment for a crime which has nothing
to do with expression?) see also Online Journalism
Review.
During 1992 and 1993, Minor
Threat had been breaking into several Southwestern Bell central
offices and other similar business. He was obtaining stolen AT&T
5ESS and System 75 circuit packs and selling them to vendors.
In February 1994, his apartment
was searched and evidence was found linking him to these crimes.
In January 1995, Minor Threat turned himself into the U.S. Marshals
after learning that they had an arrest warrant for him for Money
Laundering in violation of Title 18 USC § 1956(a)(1).
In February 1995, Minor Threat
pled guilty to the single count of money laundering. His lawyer,
Joe James Sawyer, told him that he would get a 14-month sentence.
His sentencing date was set for March 31, 1995 and was later
reset to May 5, 1995.
On May 5, at the sentencing
hearing, Minor Threat was sentenced to 70 months in federal prison
with no parole. The United States Attorney (the prosecutor) cited
Lamprecht's refusal to cooperate pursuant to the plea agreement
for the increase in his offense level and sentence increase.
In addition, the government claimed that he had threatened to
ruin one of the police officer's credit ratings, which increased
his sentence by 13 months.
In addition, the judge sentenced
Minor Threat to three years of supervised release after he completes
his sentence. The judge also imposed the following conditions
of release:
- He cannot be employed as a
computer programmer, troubleshooter or installer
- He cannot use the Internet
or any other computer network
- He cannot own a computer that
uses a modem
If these restrictions seem
ridiculous, that's because they are. Banning someone from using
the Internet is a Free Speech violation and prohibiting Minor
Threat from his career of computer programming certainly doesn't
help to rehabilitate him. He is currently looking for a lawyer
to help him fight these conditions in court.
After Minor Threat was sentenced,
he talked to his lawyers about getting a sentence reduction of
approximately one year by consulting the victims of his crimes
so they could prevent future incidents. The prosecutor agreed
that if he would talk to the victims and the military, the prosecutor
would file a motion for reduction of sentence.
Minor Threat talked to several
corporations and even to the United States Air Force Office of
Special Investigations (AFOSI). He also talked to two security
agents at GTE Southwest, who considered his advice on physical
and computer security to be very helpful. Later he talked to
a representative from Bellcore in New Jersey named Steve Branigan
as well as Jeff Thorpe from the U.S. Air Force OSI. They talked
to him mostly about computer security, cellular phones, telephone
switch security, etc. The AFOSI man asked him about several other
hackers, most of whom Minor Threat did not know. The few he did
recognize, he had talked to only once or not at all. The two
names he remembers them asking about are JSZ and Wing. Part of
the agreement was that Minor Threat not disclose the fact that
he had been interviewed by the USAF or Bellcore. So why is all
this being made public?
Because the government has
already violated the agreement. After Minor Threat completed
his end of the deal, the prosecutor decided he didn't want to
hold up the government's end so Minor Threat never got the sentencing
reduction he was promised. This could be because the U.S. Attorney
never intended to give Minor Threat the reduction or because
of a letter the U.S. Attorney received from the United States
Sentencing Commission about Minor Threat's case. (Read on for
an explanation of this.)
Remember, Minor Threat was
charged with money laundering even though he wasn't really "money
laundering", but simply selling stolen equipment. Well there's
a reason why the U.S. Attorney decided to charge Minor Threat
with money laundering instead of interstate transport of stolen
property -- because there is a sentencing disparity in the Federal
Sentencing Guidelines that allows prosecutors to get defendants
a longer sentence than their true underlying crime would get.
The guideline for money laundering begins at offence level 20,
while the guideline for interstate transport begins at 6! If
Minor Threat had been charged with his true crime, he would have
gotten approximately 46 months instead of 70 -- a 2 year difference.
The government also did this to Kevin Poulsen, another computer
hacker.
The point of all this is: The
United States Sentencing Commission has recognized this sentencing
disparity and the fact that U.S. prosecutors are abusing it as
was done in Minor Threat's case. In 1995, they proposed an amendment
to the Federal Sentencing Guidelines that would fix this disparity
by setting the offense level for money laundering to reflect
the true underlying crime. If this bill had been passed, it could
have reduced Minor Threat's sentence by up to 24 months. Minor
Threat wrote a letter to the U.S. Sentencing Commission expressing
his support for the amendment and showing how the U.S. Attorney
in his case abused the disparity to get a longer sentence. The
Sentencing Commission apparently thought the letter had merit
because they wrote a letter to Minor Threat's prosecutor, formally
requesting why he chose to charge Minor Threat with money laundering
instead of the appropriate charge of interstate transport of
stolen property. When the prosecutor got this letter, he told
Minor Threat's lawyer that he was now reluctant to file the motion
to reduce Minor Threat's sentence due to his consultation with
the USAF and other corporations.
This proposed amendment did
not pass in 1995, probably because it was bundled with  the crack cocaine amendment. The
amendment is still on the books, but won't be considered again
until 1997 because of elections this year. If you want to help
get this amendment passed, you should write to your state senator.
There is an organization called Families Against Mandatory Minimums
(FAMM) that is dedicated to making the sentencing laws more fair.
Contact them for more information.
So for now, Minor Threat's
release date is March 5, 2000.
Update:
The judge who placed the computer and internet restrictions in
Chris Lamprecht's case revisited the case himself. He said he
believed that he had made several errors in sentencing and strongly
urged Chris to appeal himself because it was likely that a higher
judge would overturn the case.
A New Hope?
The funny thing is, Judge Sam
Sparks isn't so sure Lamprecht's cause is hopeless.
In an order issued last December,
the very same judge who banished Lamprecht into electronic exile,
and who is now reviewing the hacker's petition, wrote: "The
petitioner further argues that the Court's restrictions on his
use of the Internet constitute a prior restraint in violation
of the First Amendment. This is a novel legal claim and the Court
orders the government to file a brief responding to this point
of error."
"I'm always pretty impressed
when a federal judge encourages any defendant to pursue a particular
point... he knows there's something there," says Kuhn.
"It's kind of interesting
that all the legal scholars didn't pick up on it, and now he
has."
It's a long shot, to be sure.
But the lone efforts of a hacker turned thief, who, but for an
expeditious stomach-pump, would be dead and buried, might ultimately
lead to a binding legal precedent barring the government from
arbitrarily keeping any American off the Internet.
And we'll have only one solitary
person, working alone and ignored, to thank when they read us
our Lamprecht Rights.--from ZDNet
|
 Truth can never be
told so as to be understood, and not be believ'd. William Blake, The Proverbs of Hell
Truth suppress'd, whether
by courts or crooks, will find an avenue to be told. Sheila Steele, injusticebusters.com
If you hold the mouth
of Truth, It will burst out its rib-cage. Somali proverb
Truth crushed to earth
will rise again. --William Cullen Bryant
-
- Publisher : Sheila
Steele
- Co-founder: Richard Klassen
Got something
to say about this or any other stories on this site? Go to injusticebustersblog Participate!
- injusticebusters
court advice :
- How
to walk yourself through the justice system
-
- Why
you should dump your preliminary hearing (written July 1998 and still valid)
-
- Sermonette:
Sucked
in, Diegested and spit out by Saskatoon police (You will find links
to many more sermonettes in the sidebar on this page
Another target
of Dueck's malice: Wilf Hathway
Our activism
contributed greatly to the good vibes which happened around the
civil trial.
Index
to the stories on this website
This is not
regularly updated so if you are looking for a particular story
and you have a name or keyword, please use the site search engine(at
the bottom of the page) which IS regularly updated
Index to Saskatoon Police stories
This is a pretty good scrapbook
for the 1998-2002 period.
-
-
- The Klassen/Kvello
civil Trial
-
- September 8, 2003: Trial Begins
- September 09, 2003: Pamela Klassen Shetterly's
Testimony
- September 10, 2003: Anita Klassen
- September 11, 2003: Michelle Ross
- September 12, 2003: Sheila Verway
- September 16, 2003: Michael Ross
- September 18, 2003: Ellen Gunn
- September 19, 2003: Terry Hinz
- September 19, 2003:StarPhoenix editorial,
Terry Hinz
- September 20, 2003: Louis Dupuis
- September 27, 2003: Ron Schindell,
Jay Watson
- October 01, 2003: Case
- against the Klassens weak:
documents
- October 02, 2003: Judge asked to dismiss suit: No evidence of
malicious intent: lawyers
- October 2, 2003: Letter to the editor from former "Believe
the children" advocate
- October 03, 2003: Lawyer details evidence of malice
- October
04, 2003: Judge ponders
request to drop Klassen lawsuit
- October
27, 2003: Judge
Baynton's interim decision: Quinney dropped, the rest proceed
- October 27, 2003: Claim goes forward
- October 29, 2003: Brian Dueck
- October 30, 2003: Dueck
- October 31, 2003: Brian Dueck
- November 01, 2003: Matthew Miazga
- November 04, 2003: Matthew Miazga
- November 05, 2003: Matthew Miazga
- November 06, 2003: Sonja Hansen
-
- Injusticebusters daily
reports Page 1 | Page 2
injusticebusters' daily
reports page one 1 page two
Final
judgment: Dec. 30, 2003 |
Post judgment publicity
- articles
and editorials from Jan 6-9
- Sabo's
apology
- Editorials: StarPhoenix, Leader Post and National
Post
- National
Post front page story, Jan. 10
- Sarah
Gibb's profile of Richard and Kari Klassen |
- Lives ruined by Jason Warick, Feb. 19
- April 15/04: Judge
Baynton warns defendants' lawyers not to delay damages trial
- Dueck
drops his appeal
- Full
transcript of Dueck's examinations for discovery which were part of the read-ins at
the civil trial
-
-
|
Revitalizing the
archives
From 1998 until
2002, injusticebusters was in the throes of identity crisis.
What was it? What were we doing? We grappled with editorial policy
at the same time we were learning the nuts and bolts of building
and posting a website. Once we had a secure, paid site I had
full editorial control, although I talked regularly to Richard
Klassen who was forced to move his family several times and did
not always have access to the internet. Rick's pages: one | two
We posted our
earliest and later actions.
Early versions
of the site can be found on the Wayback Machine.
I began following
other threads to stories of police and prosecutorial misconduct
and the site's character took on another facet: a newsclipping
scrapbook where stories could live longer than they would in
print form. I also began picking up other stories of wrongfully
convicted people. It was an explosion. By 2003 there were over
700 pages. I also had contact with several other people (Don Smith, Leon Walchuk, Monique Turenne, the Vopnis) and kept these stories
going.
It was the
story of the Ross children's treatment at the hands of the Saskatchewan
government which grabbed the attention of The Fifth Estate. The civil claim (The
$10M Lawsuit as we called it) was only mentioned briefly at the
end of their show which aired in November, 2000.
When Richard
Klassen began to make progress in bringing his civil claim to
court, the government and police defendants alleged he was breaking
the rules of court by publishing discovery material on the internet.
- MacNeil
clinic (the
document which started it all)
- The
Thompson Papers
- Carol
Bunko-Ruys reports
This claim
was absolutely false. However, rather than risk being thrown
out of his civil claim, Klassen undertook before Judge Mona Dovall
to sever all ties with the website.
The court fights:
- Les
Perreaux report
- QB271
These pages have links which
lead to other pages from that era. Now that some of the dust has settled,
I have been going back through the material we had posted in
the early days. In the spirit of keeping the scrapbook alive,
I have been reformatting and placing links. The original material
remains intact. I hope the information, which chronicles our
struggle is useful to you.
The identity
crisis is over. We know who we are --Sheila Steele, March
28, 2005
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