From: Bill Stewart <bill.stewart@pobox.com>
Date: Fri, 27 Feb 1998 14:20:41 -0800 (PST)
To: Information Security <cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: Killing the Unabomber
In-Reply-To: <199802250642.BAA03918@panix2.panix.com>
Message-ID: <3.0.5.32.19980227124515.008aa420@popd.ix.netcom.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


>   >   : Didn't the government finally back down on their
>   >   : attempt to legally kill the Unabomber?  
>   >   This point strikes me as pretty funny.  Kinda like a nurse rooting
>   >   for Charles Starkweather.

>Or trying to be consistent.
>Raygun: abortion is killing, but pro-death penalty.
>If killing is wrong, killing again is wrong.

No consistency involved - many of them would like to kill him.
But they've Got Their Man, and he's made it clear that a trial
will be difficult, long, expensive, involve lots of firing lawyers
and arguing about mental competency, and generally be trouble,
and he's offered to plead guilty if they won't kill him.

Even though he's a highly intelligent cold-blooded killer,
he's also close enough to crazy that the public will have
enough sympathy for him that killing him won't be highly popular,
especially because his brother wouldn't have turned him in
if he'd expected him to be killed.

Also, while his killings have been somewhat scary and weird,
they haven't generated the kind of public outrage that the
OKCity bombing did, with dead babies on the front page of the papers.
The defendents there are going to get killed, and the public
is going to enjoy it, and the Neilsen Ratings will be high.

>Next time, the killer might not be caught because
>the person who recognized (yea traffic analysis)
>his talktalk might not want them killed as a result.
>i.e. in the long run it will save lives.

I think you're right here.
				Thanks! 
					Bill
Bill Stewart, bill.stewart@pobox.com
PGP Fingerprint D454 E202 CBC8 40BF  3C85 B884 0ABE 4639