Ask HN: My Startup is Illegal | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: My Startup is Illegal

6 pointsnotme800013 comments

My Startup Is Illegal

I am designing a P2P hardware product that will (among other things) make it harder for governments to intercept or acquire the data from users’ private communications. I am working with one other person, and our concern is this:

How do you move forward with something when you know you might be taken to court, put under surveillance, heavily fined, or otherwise harassed?

We are both shy people who like to work behind the scenes. Our current strategy is to keep to ourselves and try to get a working product while off the radar. Unfortunately our other problem is that we need help and don’t know how to ask for it. We specialize in software and security and we have no experience with building hardware prototypes. Both of us are working for free, he supports a large family doing side jobs, and my family is helping me out.

I guess the discussion I would like to see is twofold:

1) How do you stay strong when faced with a huge legal grey area like this? Have you ever survived being typecast as “the wrong side of the law”? How can you move forward with innovation when you are constantly in a paranoid state?

2) How do you meet people when you feel uptight discussing the details of your project? Especially when you can’t afford to hire someone, and you need to appeal to the small group who are motivated by similar passions?

I hope we are not too DIY for our own good. I would hate to see a creative project like this get killed because of something so surmountable.

It might be difficult for me to answer questions about my situation, especially publicly. I am open to the idea of talking privately, and I apologize in advance if I seem cagey.

notme8000@hushmail.com

How do you move forward with something when you know you might be taken to court, put under surveillance, heavily fined, or otherwise harassed?

I think the question is also, "Why do you move forward with something when you know you might be taken to court, put under surveillance, heavily fined, or otherwise harassed?"

I'm not trying to be pedantic; it's a legitimate question. Why do this if you know going into that it will cause potentially great harm to both you and your partner who "supports a large family"? It's akin to jumping off a cliff that you haven't looked over to see what's at the bottom. So there would need to be a very compelling reason to move forward, I would think.

So what's your reason for pushing through these problems? When times get tough, what will motivate you to keep pushing through rather than quitting after 2-3 years?

Some suggestions-

1. Tormail rather than hushmail. 2. Get on the cypherpunks mailing list, you'll get lots of input from lots of smart people http://www.cypherpunks.to/list/ 3. Use Tor for everything that pertains to your project. 4. Find a group that really needs your product and have them on your side, like dissidents in dictatorships, talk to them, find out how your product can help them, if you're in a "democratic" country and the authorities come after you, you can legitimately tell them that you're helping to free the people of a country, it helps to be able to name dissidents who have been murdered by such a regime, you can then ask the agents of your state if they are in favor of these murders, in many countries advocating murder in a different state is a crime, so it is most likely they will not answer your question, merely asking that in a recorded interview will most likely see you free. Afterwards, assuming you are free from state interference it is important that you make it public what has happened to you, do interviews with tech and liberty minded media, talk to the EFF, NOT Wired. 5. Have contingency plans, like having your schematics, code etc ready to be distributed on TPB like the 3D printed gun from Defense Distributed has been. 6. If you are at some stage going to release what you have non-anonymously, do it through a separate legal entity, like a limited liability company, so any legal ramifications are borne by that legal entity and you are not personally liable, you will need a lawyer to advise you, you might contact the EFF and have a conversation with them. 7. Be careful, and good luck.

Sorry about rgw formating, hope this is better.

Some suggestions-

1. Tormail rather than hushmail.

2. Get on the cypherpunks mailing list, you'll get lots of input from lots of smart people http://www.cypherpunks.to/list/

3. Use Tor for everything that pertains to your project.

4. Find a group that really needs your product and have them on your side, like dissidents in dictatorships, talk to them, find out how your product can help them, if you're in a "democratic" country and the authorities come after you, you can legitimately tell them that you're helping to free the people of a country, it helps to be able to name dissidents who have been murdered by such a regime, you can then ask the agents of your state if they are in favor of these murders, in many countries advocating murder in a different state is a crime, so it is most likely they will not answer your question, merely asking that in a recorded interview will most likely see you free. Afterwards, assuming you are free from state interference it is important that you make it public what has happened to you, do interviews with tech and liberty minded media, talk to the EFF, NOT Wired.

5. Have contingency plans, like having your schematics, code etc ready to be distributed on TPB like the 3D printed gun from Defense Distributed has been.

6. If you are at some stage going to release what you have non-anonymously, do it through a separate legal entity, like a limited liability company, so any legal ramifications are borne by that legal entity and you are not personally liable, you will need a lawyer to advise you, you might contact the EFF and have a conversation with them.

7. Be careful, and good luck.

I forgot something.

8. Assume the Moscow Rules are true, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscow_Rules and if you are particularly worried, learn some tradecraft, http://www.paladin-press.com/category/Espionage_and_Investig... .

Re #4: The Logan Act makes it a felony for a US citizen to conduct foreign relations without authority.

0) Everyone is already under surveillance all the time.

1) Be in start-up stealth mode if there is a high chance your product will be misunderstood in a negative way.

2) Seek cohorts at these places: http://www.2600.com/meetings/mtg.html http://hackerspaces.org/wiki/List_of_Hacker_Spaces

Not my post but really helpful links, thanks a lot.

It's not clear why you think your startup is illegal ? - encryption broadly speaking isn't legally restricted in most western countries.

If what you're doing is illegal in the country that you're in then why not move to a country in which it will be legal ?

Apply for a patent. The office will be too lazy to actually consider what you are doing and give you a license to file abroad which you can show to the feebs to prove you are not doing anything illegal.

Why would this be illegal? Lots of people work on products that make it harder for governments to snoop on citizens.

OP might have seen some press about the "CALEA II" proposals that the FBI is widely reported to be shopping around Washington, which would, reportedly, impose large penalties for failure to wiretap on demand. (This would probably be civil as opposed to criminal liability, but the fines are described as being large enough that they're obviously intended to force noncompliant services out of business[1].)

That certainly isn't law yet, but it appears to be a serious proposal, and for someone thinking about privacy-preserving technology, it might be worth worrying about.

[1] http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/04/29/calea_ref...

You should include which country's laws that you are concerned about.

i thought you're selling drugz

Reply on news.ycombinator.com