From: Dale Thorn <dthorn@gte.net>
Date: Fri, 29 Nov 1996 09:34:02 -0800 (PST)
To: Doug Barnes <cman@c2.net>
Subject: Re: Anon
In-Reply-To: <199611290549.VAA09766@atropos.c2.org>
Message-ID: <329F1E68.6EF8@gte.net>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


Doug Barnes wrote:
> > Hal Finney wrote:
> > | As I mentioned a couple of days ago, science fiction writer David Brin
> > | has an argument against not only anonymity, but _privacy_ as well.
> > | Where cypherpunks tend to think of privacy as both beneficial and
> > | inevitable, Brin sees it as harmful and doomed.  He has an article in
> > | the December 1996 issue of Wired discussing his ideas.

[snip]

> There are many arguments against David's position; let's grant the
> possibility of near-perfect surveilance if it has popular support
> (which is pretty dubious, but has been addressed by others), and
> see what arguments remain:
> 1) I would conjecture that popular approval would make or break
>    this kind of system. It's amazing what kind of spontaneous civil
>    disobedience can spring up once there's a critical mass of
>    distaste for something like this.
>    (Taiwan story warning...) This reminds me of the pirate cable
>    TV wars, which hit their peak during my stay there -- essentially,
>    the government had outlawed cable TV altogether, mostly because
>    they controlled most of the existing media outlets, and didn't
>    believe the citizen-units needed more than what they had. Various
>    entrepreneurs began wiring Taipei for cable -- sloppy, ad-hoc
>    cable lays that were strung from building to building. The gov't
>    would come and cut the cables; new cables would be laid. People
>    paid their cable bills, but could never quite manage to identify
>    the cable installer when the government came around asking.
>    Programming consisted of a van with a bunch of VCRs and a small
>    satellite dish, that would plug into the network at various places.
>    It go to the point where in some areas there was so much cable, it
>    was tricky to figure out which were the old ones and which were
>    the new. Eventually, the government gave up and licensed some
>    cable operators.

[mo' snip]

The above comments, and the snipped comments about "a few more Wacos will
wake the people up etc.", assume that the govt. hasn't learned anything
about the politics of mass surveillance over the past few decades.

In fact, they've learned a lot.  The surveillance can be kept completely
quiet, and when they need to take someone out, they can do that very
quietly as well.  And not a whole lot of people will be angry, because
they'll crank up the reputation destructo-machine/P.R. press to preclude
any problems there.

Waco was an aberration, because key people were hiding behind a quantity
of other non-key people, and the FBI blundered in and grandstanded to the
point of creating a Kent State kind of scene.  To suggest that future
Waco's are necessary to take out troublemakers is shortsighted.