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1997-09-12 - Re: The problem of playing politics with our constitutional rights

Header Data

From: David H Dennis <david@amazing.com>
To: declan@well.com (Declan McCullagh)
Message Hash: 63930ef9b638edf73d230741481541c129455d426f7bb77c6a73a372338601c2
Message ID: <199709120505.WAA08152@remarkable.amazing.com>
Reply To: <Pine.GSO.3.95.970911214229.23060C-100000@well.com>
UTC Datetime: 1997-09-12 05:18:03 UTC
Raw Date: Fri, 12 Sep 1997 13:18:03 +0800

Raw message

From: David H Dennis <david@amazing.com>
Date: Fri, 12 Sep 1997 13:18:03 +0800
To: declan@well.com (Declan McCullagh)
Subject: Re: The problem of playing politics with our constitutional rights
In-Reply-To: <Pine.GSO.3.95.970911214229.23060C-100000@well.com>
Message-ID: <199709120505.WAA08152@remarkable.amazing.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



> Your general idea is right-on. If lots of folks use crypto, it'll be
> politically more difficult for the government to ban it. But do many
> browser users even //know// they're using an encrypted channel? Probably
> not. This is an education issue as well as a deployment issue.

I must admit that I didn't think much about crypto until this came up.

You know, I think there are a couple of types of Libertarians. 

Type one says that government doesn't do anything right, because
collectively they are incompetent, in the same way many people in big
companies make bad decisions.  Government is like the biggest company
in the nation, with no profit pressure to restrain bureaucracy.  In
addition, government is a way to try and reconcile opposing views, and
so we rarely get a "pure" version of anything - in fact, we often get
contradictory results, such as tobacco subsidies colliding with
tobacco restrictions.  Because of this, smaller government is better -
solve the tobacco problem by enacting /neither/ subsidies nor
restrictions, and save a whole pile of money and effort.

Type two says that government doesn't do anything right because of
actual malicious actions within government - that government is
a conspiracy between fat cat businessmen and nasty spooks, and
that they very often, quite deliberately do the wrong thing.

I've traditionally been a Type One libertarian, but I think you can
only explain the current crypto efforts with Type Two.

I must confess that I'm wondering what Seth Finkelstein, Pro-Government
Warrior, able to jump over 50 Libertarians in a single bound, thinks of
all this.  Crypto restrictions are natural to oppose in a Libertarian
world, due to our fundemental distrust of government.  Where do they
fit in a Liberal one?

D

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