From: "William H. Geiger III" <whgiii@amaranth.com>
Date: Thu, 3 Apr 1997 01:01:13 -0800 (PST)
To: nadeshda@mexred.net.mx (nadeshda vargas stepanenko)
Subject: Re: q.N2
In-Reply-To: <3342CF22.6181@mexred.net.mx>
Message-ID: <199704030313.DAA17299@mailhub.amaranth.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



In <3342CF22.6181@mexred.net.mx>, on 04/02/97 at 03:26 PM,
   nadeshda@mexred.net.mx (nadeshda vargas stepanenko) said:







>	To whom it may concern:

>	Thank you for answering my mail, it was very useful for me, but at the
>end you asked me why do I think legislation would be needed?

>	I have several opinions:

>	In one part I think that it is not necessary to legislate, because as
>you said you have to protect your privacy from the gobernent, I m agree
>of that, but I have other situations:

>	I m going to give you some examples:

Well these are some of the straw-men that get pulled out whenever the
Government wishes to clamp down on the rights & freedoms of it's citizens.
Whenever you here the buzz-phrases: "save the children" this means "take
away more of your rights" & "terrorist" means "anyone opposed to the
policies of the current administration". -- Translations form the "George
Orwell NewSpeak Dictionary published 1984."

>	1) I heard about several cases about individuals who use the Internet
>to attract children who are then raped and murdered, kidnapped and sold
>on the black market, many of these pediophiles work out in open in
>complete anonimaty, due to the structure of the Internet and many
>service providers.

The overwhelming cases of child abuse including pediophilia are not done by
strangers but by members of the childs family or those close to the family;
freinds, daycare workers, neighbors, cleargy, ...ect. Those with close
contact to the child on a regular basis. Any regulation on the Internet
would do nothing to prevent this. It would be just as easy to lure a child
by using the Postal system but you don't see anyone demanding that all
letters be written on postcards to they can be read.

>	2) And what about the terroists who use the Internet to comunicate with
>each other, gather information and funding establish methods,
>investigate methods of terrorism (how to make a bomb in your house using
>abono and household chemicals.  This is an area that should be strongly
>controlled, but the question is how do you do it without restricting the
>rights of the average citizen?

I can see no way of regulating such information. The basic information
required to make all kinds of nasty bombs & chemicals are taught in High
School chemistry classes. I guess we could ban all science and go back to
living in caves but that doen't see very practical now does it?

 " Those who would trade freedom for security deserve neither." -- Benjamin
Franklin.
 " When a government spends most of it's time and energy protecting itself
from it's own people it is doomed to fail" -- William H. Geiger III

-- 
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