From: Jim choate <ravage@bga.com>
Date: Tue, 19 Jul 94 07:13:58 PDT
To: xentrac@cybele.unm.edu (Kragen J. Sittler)
Subject: Re: Sue D. Nym
In-Reply-To: <9407191057.AA16076@cybele.unm.edu>
Message-ID: <199407191413.JAA28997@zoom.bga.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text


> the above things will *matter*.  Clipper is flopping and will continue
> to flop.  DT, in whatever form, will never be useful; the government
> simply does not have the resources to closely watch the phone network.
> If a singularity-producing AI is born, well, all bets may be off...
> but then again, the AI might want a little privacy too.  ITAR is
> dying, and we already have a National ID Card.  We have had one for
> more than half a century.
>
On the issue of AI, the Dept. of Treasury has a AI project as White
Sands which is intended to watch real-time the monetary transactions
of the citizen-units real-time (quite a task if you ask me). It would
not be a stretch of the imagination to see such technology hooked into
a network of intelligent switches for real-time communications monitoring.
In most cases all the AI would need access to is the identity of the 
parties, not necessarily the entire contents of the communication.

As to the national ID card you refer to, is this the Social Security Card?
If so it is not, nor was it ever meant to be, a national ID card. The only
agencies which *require* access to it are the IRS and the SSA.

> But the government which supports these things is being pulled
> gradually into the embrace of communism.  Inexorably, communism sucks
> at the hearts of the American voters.  The decline of America's
> current government is already irreversible.  Our duty, as human beings
> at the scene of the crime, is to make its death as pleasant as
> possible, and its rebirth as innocuous as possible.
>
Seems to me we are looking at Socialism and not Communism as the trend of 
the day. Communism implies that we all work together in a 'commune' where all
is owned by all. Socialism however is the belief that the people can handle
small amounts of private ownership and responsibility but ultimately the 
power resides in the authorities. The situation really reminds me of the 
post-WWI conditions in Italy when Mussollini took over and instituted facism
as the order of the day. The only good thing one can say about that is that
the trains run on time.

> :) It's not millenarianism, Eli.  It's just confidence that in this
> age, when information is exchanged in ways it never has been before,
> the old forms of government and economy won't work anymore.
>
I do not believe this for a minute. Governments and economies are mitigated 
by psychology not technology. Technology is the means, not the goal. The      
information is what is important, not how it is transfered. While it is true
that the existing systems are having a hard time keeping up with the technology
this is due to beurocratic inertia to do it as it has been done in the past
more than any particular aspect of technology which prevents its use by any
particular party. If your thesis is correct then we have nothing to worry 
about and our 'meeting' here is a waste of our time, we should be out pushing
technology even harder and not worrying about government and its policies 
in any way. I get the impressio that you feel the world is driven by technology
and I hold that people always have and always will drive the world and how
it turns out. Technology is a means to an end, not an end unto itself.

Take care all.