From: tcmay@got.net (Timothy C. May)
Date: Tue, 5 Sep 95 21:31:51 PDT
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: Are booby-trapped computers legal?
Message-ID: <ac7271110e021004e592@[205.199.118.202]>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


At 4:19 AM 9/6/95, Jim Choate wrote:

>> Thus, I suspect it is fully legal to build an electrified fence around
>> one's PC, providing suitable warnings are included.
>>
>
>As far as I know the owner of property has no legal right to kill a person
>either traspassing or stealing it in any of the 50 states. There was a
>recent federal ruling that basicly says that if you meet a burglar in your
>home at nite you can not kill or otherwise harm them unless you're life is
>directly threatened. In short, you MUST give up the ground if at all
>possible. Federal and all 50 states (as far as I have been able to
>determine) rule human life to have a inherantly higher value than property
>of any type (this does not apply to government institutions).

Well, I wasn't saying one had a legal right to kill a person either
trespassing or stealing, I was saying that electrified fences carrying
lethal voltages are extant. How they got that way, and what licenses are
involved, is unknown to me. But they do exist.

>In Texas and all other cattle states that I am aware of, there are specific
>laws that limit how much voltage and current capacity an electrified fence
>can have. These laws specificaly prohibit any form of lethal installation.
>There is no license required nor do you have to mark the fences as electrified.

Cattle fences are not what I was talking about. I have an electrified fence
on one side of my property, to keep the deer away. Lethal voltage fences,
to keep humans out, are another matter.


....

>I don't know what you call it but if nothing else it is ethicaly and moraly
>reprehinsible.

Different strokes for different folks. Anyone entering my house unannounced
faces lethal response. I think of it as evolution in action, and doubt I
would lose any sleep over this.

It has nothing to do with equating human life over property, it has to do
with defending one's property and (maybe) one's life. Here in California,
it is becoming more and more common for "home invasions" to be followed by
execution of all of the witnesses. (Read "The San Jose Mercury News" for
accounts of gang invasions in which all the residents in a home are lined
up and shot, excecution-style.)

I won't get into a discussion of which states permit lethal force
responses, as this is a topic which even I think belongs in
talk.politics.guns or similar fora.

Suffice it to say that most states allow lethal response under threatening
circumstances.

--Tim May

---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
tcmay@got.net  408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
Corralitos, CA              | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
Higher Power: 2^756839      | black markets, collapse of governments.
"National borders are just speed bumps on the information superhighway."