From: "Vladimir Z. Nuri" <vznuri@netcom.com>
Date: Sat, 27 Jan 1996 06:29:01 +0800
To: m5@dev.tivoli.com (Mike McNally)
Subject: Re: RANT: cypherpunks do NSA's job for them!!
In-Reply-To: <9601260028.AA12225@alpha>
Message-ID: <199601261934.LAA21926@netcom10.netcom.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



>Vladimir Z. Nuri writes:
> > the Tao of bad government: if you really want to get rid of a law,
> > act and think at all times as if it doesn't even exist.
>
>I accept that that's one way of going about things, but I challenge
>you to demonstrate conclusively that it is the only means to generate
>political interest in opposition to a law. 

it was not my point at all to "demonstrate conclusively" that ignoring
a law helps create opposition to a law. actually, I was not talking
about opposition to a law at all. my main point was that for a law
to work, people must *actively*support* it. by not supporting a
law, it effectively ceases to exist.

 in other words, what you consider
"opposition" to laws in fact may be playing into the hands of the NSA.
by taking the laws very seriously (such as the preposterous ideas that
bureacrats are allowed to prevent companies from even exporting software
with "hooks" in it, and effectively allowing spooks to vet every
piece of crypto code written in this supposedly free country) you
are doing NSA's "heavy lifting" *for* them.

these laws would be no problem if nobody followed them, if nobody gave
a damn about them. *opposition* in many ways is the wrong mindset.
by opposing the laws, you implicitly reveal that you believe they are
legitimate, that they are enforceable, that they are important to
conform to, etc (all the things that cpunks publicly deny). 
by ignoring them, you put your reality where your mouth is. it sounds
paradoxical, but ignoring a law is far more destructive to it
than opposing it!!

> I happen to disagree with
>this, and I refuse to accept the wacky notion that by explaining to
>somebody that what they're doing is in violation of a pointless stupid
>law, and explaining why it's only through wide exposure of that
>pointless stupidity that the law and others like it can be struck
>down, that I am unwittingly strengthening the law.  Balderdash.

"when the wise hear of the Tao, they are intrigued. when the 
skeptical hear of the Tao, they scoff. when
the stupid hear of the Tao, they laugh loudly".