From: Kent Crispin <kent@songbird.com>
Date: Sun, 4 May 1997 19:10:31 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: FC: Responses to Tim May's criticism of SAFE, and a rebuttal
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.3.95.970502084319.13849A-100000@vorlon.mit.edu>
Message-ID: <19970504025133.49990@bywater.songbird.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


On Sat, May 03, 1997 at 11:01:23PM -0800, Tim May wrote:
[...]
> 
> When a nut shot up a schoolyard, we lost our basic right to buy basic
> firearms. (The same thing happened in Australia and Britain, too. Almost as
> if there's a script being followed. "Save the children" is the passphrase
> for removing liberties.)
>
> When it was _suspected_ that a bomb took the TWA flight down, look what
> happened to the liberties of travellers in public places.
> 
> As Ernest notes, all it will take is one _major_ terrorist incident for
> many of the remaining liberties to vanish in a period of a few weeks. Had
> the World Trade Center bombs succeeded (in bringing down one of the
> towers), this would have done it. When freedom fighters ultimately succeed
> in, say, killing 5000 Londoners in a Sarin or Ricin attack in the Tube,
> expect dramatic moves in all Western nations to sharply curtail civil
> liberties.

I think rather it is an inevitable consequence of population density
and technological advancement.  Technological advancement creates the
facilities that a deranged individual can use to cause large amounts
of damage in a very short time.  Society doesn't yet have a 
successful response to this problem.

> There is no hope that legal measures can maintain liberty. Only
> technological bypasses of the State can succeed.

This is a persistent misstatement on your part.  You constantly label
your enemy as the "state", but really it is society as a whole. 
Government, military, industry, small business, the educational
system, the "masses" -- it is all a parcel, and it is very difficult
(if not meaningless) to try to single out the "state" as an 
independent actor in this parcel.

In any case, even "technological bypasses" will almost certainly 
fail.  Then what?

-- 
Kent Crispin				"No reason to get excited",
kent@songbird.com			the thief he kindly spoke...
PGP fingerprint:   B1 8B 72 ED 55 21 5E 44  61 F4 58 0F 72 10 65 55
http://songbird.com/kent/pgp_key.html