From: Carl Ellison <cme@sw.stratus.com>
Date: Fri, 25 Feb 94 14:01:53 PST
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: what is a right?
Message-ID: <199402252201.RAA00241@galt.sw.stratus.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


lyled@pentagon-emh9.army.mil writes:

>
>
>Good question... what exactly is a "right"?  To me, a right is something
>that cannot be removed from any citizen.  

Life can be removed so there must be no rights because I can't imagine
anything more irremovable from me than my own life.

Actually, crypto is nearly that irremovable.  The history of crypto is
of spontaneous invention by human beings whenever they feel their
privacy threatened.

>					   I would like to see privacy as a
>right.  However, at what point do you draw the line?  When does privacy
>interfere with someone else's rights?

Not anywhere I can think of -- except: there's always my mother's favorite
one liner: "Officer, officer, arrest that man: he's whistling a dirty
song."  Along those lines, I took a massage class once and my boss at the
time was a good, faithful church-going repressed citizen who heard what I
was doing and apparently started fantasizing about the orgies we were
having in massage class, but of course he was too embarrassed to actually
ask me for details.  I suppose my privacy interfered with his right to
peace of mind.

>Freedom of speech has never been a right.  A lot of people think it is.  But
>go out on a street corner and try to incite a riot.  See what happens.  Or
>threaten someone.  Or commit treason.  Speech is not a right.

Ah...but private speech can not incite crowds to riot, by definition.
As long as it's private, it can't be "fire" in a crowded theater.
It can't be peddling porno.  It's private while all those other actions
are offensive because they're not private.

 - Carl Ellison                          cme@sw.stratus.com
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