From: jamesd@echeque.com
Date: Sun, 7 Apr 1996 18:29:30 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: "Contempt" charges likely to increase
Message-ID: <199604070626.WAA10352@dns1.noc.best.net>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


At 01:00 PM 4/6/96 -0500, Black Unicorn wrote:
> To me this entire thread has threatened to suggest to people that they 
> need only thumb their noses at the authorities, be it by cryptographic 
> protocol or otherwise, and sit back in their easy chair and smile to 
> themselves. [...]
>
> I understand that direct confrontation with government is appealing to 
> the authority hater.  (I happen to be one).  Overt resistance, however, 
> of the character suggested by Mr. Bell and others, is going to cause 
> problems in two ways.  Firstly, its going to cause the individual 
> resister a good deal of headaches.  Secondly, its going to make bad law 
> eventually.

On this you are simply wrong:

As Jim Bell pointed out, the current level of repression would have
been unthinkable thirty years ago, and it has occurred with very 
little actual violence.  99% pure bluff. The authorities are 
generally reluctant to risk their reputation capital by direct 
confrontation.

Government projects an image of being all powerful, but in fact they
are in the same position as the lion tamer bullying his lions or the
Mahout commanding the elephant to drag logs.

Somebody complained that the image I put in by CDA protest was not
obscene, mererly indecent (due perhaps due to the lousy dithering
which obscured certain crucial features of the image) -- so I amended
it to one which is definitely obscene.
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              				|  
We have the right to defend ourselves	|   http://www.jim.com/jamesd/
and our property, because of the kind	|  
of animals that we are. True law	|   James A. Donald
derives from this right, not from the	|  
arbitrary power of the state.		|   jamesd@echeque.com