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1996-03-11
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[Prev| Next| Index] 22 Feb 1996, Jason Dunne, funne@mcs.com
First - Nice job, Karl. I thought your essay was deep and persuasive. I
don't know exactly how to make a contribution after an essay like that, but
here goes:
Child pornography. That's an easy one. You either love it or you hate it.
I've never met someone who is ambivalent about kiddie porn. I personally am
disgusted by the thought of child pornography. I have never seen any, but
I've seen pornography and I've seen children, and they do not belong
together under any circumstances. We are told the Telecommunications
Decency Act is to prevent the child pornographers from having an outlet for
their wares. I'm having a hard time swallowing that one. I don't really
believe the issue here _is_ child pornography. In fact the act might more
aptly be named the Boogeyman Act of 1996. People who would like to have
absolute power over us like to use the nameless, faceless boogeyman to
establish their power. When we were children, this tactic may have been
used by our parents to explain something beyond our grasp and, in the case
of our parents, was likely for our own good. It is my opinion, however,
that government does not exist to function as society's "parents." The men
and women who developed the principles our nation is based upon used the
term "a government of the people, by the people, and for the people." When
a very few people try to pass unconstitutionally restrictive censorship
laws to keep our nation safe from The Boogeyman, this is not law of the
people, it is not law by the people, and it is certainly not law for the
people.
We have seen a number of boogeymen in recent history. The Commies. The Drug
Lords. The people you can never seem to keep a hold on, no matter how hard
you squeeze. I don't like kiddie porn. I'd like to see an end to it before
I finish typing this essay. The government is not going to eliminate kiddie
porn, however, no matter how hard it squeezes. It's only going to squeeze
the 99.999999999% of us who are not child pornographers until we pop. Let's
leave the first amendment intact.
Second - This can and very well may get worse. I think the right to bear
arms includes informational arms. We can devend ourselves by demanding
privacy in our communications. Right now, the best way to make that demand
is to use encryption when sending messages. I intend to use encryption
whenever and wherever possible for any message sent across the internet,
private, confidential or otherwise. Encryption is not just for spies and
"commies" ;*) PGP (pretty good privacy) is free of charge, thanks to a guy
named Robert Zimmerman, and is available for PC, Mac, Unix, and Amiga
platforms. It is extremely easy to use, and can been seen like putting your
mail in an envelope. Contrary to what the name implies, it is VERY secure.
With 1024 bit encryption, which is what you would normally use, there is
not enough computing power in the world to crack your message. Headlines
were made when one message using Netscape's 40-bit encryption scheme (the
one that is legal to export out of the US) was broken using millions of
dollars of computer equipment. Difficulty of cracking the message goes up
exponentially with every bit used to encode. Anyhow, back from my tangent,
I challenge all of us beets (ingrid - sorry I haven't met you and I'm
already challenging you) to have a public key by memorial day. Mine is
available via Anna's & my web page <http://www.mcs.com/~funne/home.html>.
If and when we do so, we should make it a matter of principle to send
messages using PGP. I know this may be old hat for some of you beetsters,
but anyone that would like help getting up and running with PGP, let me
know. It may seem a bit paranoid to be talking about this encryption and
everything, but I am not a paranoid person, and these laws (and the recent
turnout in New Hampshire) have me more than a little concerned.
Third - Thanks Fuzzy for taking the effort to coordinate this.
Love & red-hued tubers,
Jason, aka $%@#kf$%4324GGR4gr@!~@ (just kidding)
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