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Arise, you have nothing to lose but your barbed wire fences!

1997-07-23 - Re: Keepers of the keys

Header Data

From: Paul Bradley <paul@fatmans.demon.co.uk>
To: Kent Crispin <kent@songbird.com>
Message Hash: e2ef5040ea214b10e21565afa797c75d9c889d73363be820e82cf5c19ace1ed7
Message ID: <Pine.LNX.3.91.970721151947.985A-100000@fatmans.demon.co.uk>
Reply To: <19970720170513.43286@bywater.songbird.com>
UTC Datetime: 1997-07-23 23:11:53 UTC
Raw Date: Thu, 24 Jul 1997 07:11:53 +0800

Raw message

From: Paul Bradley <paul@fatmans.demon.co.uk>
Date: Thu, 24 Jul 1997 07:11:53 +0800
To: Kent Crispin <kent@songbird.com>
Subject: Re: Keepers of the keys
In-Reply-To: <19970720170513.43286@bywater.songbird.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.3.91.970721151947.985A-100000@fatmans.demon.co.uk>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain




> That is *exactly* what Tim is doing.  He is wrapping himself in the
> flag and shouting about how he has the one true vision of what the 
> hallowed founding fathers thought:

Foo. Tim has never claimed to have a true vision, as in all things it is 
highly individual and subjective, nor does he claim that even if his 
vision of their intentions were correct it would be the only correct 
interpretation. An argument based on discrediting the other persons 
perspective rather than trying to make an objective accessment is 
unlikely to ever be productive, clearly you must have no opinion 
whatsoever on this or any other subject or you would be claiming to have 
the one true vision of the reality of the situation, wouldn`t you???.

> >>> Kill the key grabbers and all those who support them. Isn't it exactly what
> >>> Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson, and the others would have argued?
> 
> Pardon my patriotic tears...
> 
> Can there be any doubt at all? It's obviously old cheap rhetoric
> through and through, not even Bill Clinton at his worst could match
> it.  Of course, the true believers chorus "Yea, verily", and are
> impressed by the fire and brimstone; and the anon crowd always chimes
> in after a respectful delay... 

Yea, verily.

Surely Kent you are not claiming that the founding fathers would have 
considered it right to stand by passively and allow the government to 
pass laws allowing them to intrude on citizens private communications and 
stored data?

And your implied contention that the congress proponents of GAK are 
entitled to freely propose such legislation is flawed in two ways:

1. Elected poloticians do not have totally unrestricted free speech, this 
is because they are employees of the state and are bound by contract. You 
would not expect a senator to last long if he stood on the steps of 
congress and loudly proclaimed "kill all the niggers". This very same 
contract also involved their swearing an oath to uphold the constitution, 
hence proposing or voting for unconstitutional laws is a breach of this 
contract.

2. Further, the speech of elected officials can directly infringe the 
rights of citizens within their jurisdiction, a congress-critter 
proposing a GAK system or speaking in favour of a compulsory GAK bill is 
shouting fire in a crowded theatre, it is not pure speech.

        Datacomms Technologies data security
       Paul Bradley, Paul@fatmans.demon.co.uk
  Paul@crypto.uk.eu.org, Paul@cryptography.uk.eu.org    
       Http://www.cryptography.home.ml.org/
      Email for PGP public key, ID: FC76DA85
     "Don`t forget to mount a scratch monkey"

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