From: "Vladimir Z. Nuri" <vznuri@netcom.com>
Date: Wed, 9 Oct 1996 11:54:10 -0700 (PDT)
To: Duncan Frissell <frissell@panix.com>
Subject: Re: Government Denial of Service Attacks
In-Reply-To: <3.0b19.32.19961008154059.00a26358@panix.com>
Message-ID: <199610091854.LAA21494@netcom6.netcom.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


DF writes about "GDOS", government-denial-of-service.

you make some very good points that it is impossible for the
government to stamp out activities which it deems illegal
but the public disagrees and flouts. but you don't consider
the situation of harassment. if something should be legal
in a country, it costs the population a lot for it to be
illegal. I don't know if there are government regulators
in NY handling the "illegal apartment" thing, but this
"crime" surely costs the public a lot. 

what is your argument?
that laws against things flouted by the public are meaningless?
the laws have a very tangible effect of harassment upon the 
populace, and in fact the government might assert that 
enforcement is not necessarily the point. it may still be
that there are far fewer of these apartments than there
would be if such a thing was legal (actually, this seems
pretty obvious). the point is, even laws that are only
selectively enforced can be useful to the government. it
is true that imposing an absolute situation like censorship
may be impossible, but that doesn't mean that lack of
absolute enforcement is not useful to the government. as
others (TCM etc) have pointed out frequently, selective enforcement
is a very useful tool in the government arsenal.

in other words, you can't really make the argument that
you seem to be making (as I interpret it), that laws that
don't have good enforcement potential have no value to the
government. they may in fact accomplish exactly what the
government wants. I agree with you that they have poor
social value. the key is trying to get the government
in synch with the population. what you are pointing out 
in the core, I would say, is that a government out of tune
with the population is a society in the midst of a downward spiral.