From: angels@wavenet.com (CyberAngels Director : Colin Gabriel Hatcher)
Date: Mon, 29 Apr 1996 20:03:58 +0800
To: "Allen B. Ethridge" <ethridge@onramp.net>
Subject: Freedom and security
Message-ID: <v01510107a9e4964f3008@[198.147.118.206]>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



>No.  "Those who sacrifice security for freedom, will have neither" is
>not consistent with Franklin's statement, nor is it true.  Security and
>freedom are antithetical, and worse than that, security is always an
>illusion.  But you can have your illusion, as long as you keep it out of
>my life.  Censor yourself if you wish, but don't censor anything I might
>want to look up.
>

The relationship / balance between security and freedom is always a
defining factor in a society.  My point is that a society with no laws and
no codes of conduct is not a free society.  This is not the same thing as
saying that all societies need government.   Small communities can and do
operate without major legislation, using what sociologists refer to as
"informal social controls", e.g. peer pressure.  But even those small
communities require and enforce boundaries on the conduct of their members.
There is no society that tolerates the murder of its innocent members.

The Internet may once have been one of those small close knit communities,
small enough not to require law enforcement - although even then it had
rules that had to be followed.  But that Internet is gone, and it will
never return, because now its the biggest city in the world, and the
history of the change from pastoral communities to urban life, to the
development of nation states and power blocs is also the history of crime.
And as the Internet grows, so will its security problems.

My position is to seek a balance between the freedom of the individual and
the security of the community.  My argument is that when the security of
the community is threatened by the freedom of the individual, the community
will always prioritise its safety.  Good government of course means
maintaining individual freedoms *and* maintaining community security.  I
actually disagree that they are antithetical.  On the contrary they are a
balance that any society has to find.  Where individual freedom takes over
you have the urban jungle where predators consume prey.  Where security
takes over you have the totalitarian state.  Neither is necessary nor
inevitable.

We are simply concentrating on the problem from two different angles.  My
concern is to maximise community safety while protecting individual
freedom.  Your angle is to maximise individual freedom while protecting
community safety.  There is IMHO very little difference between the two.



*********************************************************
Colin Gabriel Hatcher - CyberAngels Director
angels@wavenet.com

"Two people may disagree, but
that does not mean that one of them is evil"

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