[104623] in Cypherpunks
Re: Feds Seize Houses for Illegal Downloading
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Greg Broiles)
Sat Oct 24 23:56:23 1998
Date: Sat, 24 Oct 1998 20:46:54 -0700 (PDT)
From: Greg Broiles <gbroiles@netbox.com>
To: Robert Hettinga <rah@shipwright.com>
cc: cypherpunks@cyberpass.net
In-Reply-To: <v04020a06b2582e97b19e@[139.167.130.246]>
Reply-To: Greg Broiles <gbroiles@netbox.com>
On Sat, 24 Oct 1998, Robert Hettinga wrote:
> > Jail all anon remailer users as part of some RICO conspiracy?
>
> Bingo. Hanging together, or hanging separately, I'd suppose.
>
> Any lawyers out there know how well tested RICO is, constitutionally?
RICO has been around for quite some time now (14 years, IIRC) and the
Supreme Court has reviewed it several times. However, there's lots to RICO
that isn't civil forfeiture, and there are lots of forfeiture statutes
that aren't RICO.
The particular statute at issue may or may not have been subjected to
judicial review - the current Supreme Court seems to be be generally
comfortable with civil forfeitures. I wouldn't hold out a lot of hope that
they'll be giving houses back to child porn defendants.
Drug defendants have been fighting (and losing) these battles for years
now. In 20 years we'll be losing our houses over parking tickets and open
container violations. The rights we recognize for people with unpleasant
or distasteful practices are the rights we should expect to enjoy
ourselves.
--
Greg Broiles
gbroiles@netbox.com
