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- Xref: sparky sci.crypt:4355 comp.org.eff.talk:6781 alt.privacy:2097 talk.politics.guns:23527
- Newsgroups: sci.crypt,comp.org.eff.talk,alt.privacy,talk.politics.guns
- Path: sparky!uunet!caen!batcomputer!genie!starr
- From: starr@genie.slhs.udel.edu (Tim Starr)
- Subject: Re: Registering "Assault Keys"
- Message-ID: <1992Nov5.085732.1183@genie.slhs.udel.edu>
- Organization: UDel, School of Life & Health Sciences
- References: <1cs7qlINN29t@iskut.ucs.ubc.ca> <1992Nov2.104157.21010@genie.slhs.udel.edu> <1d4d6uINNq7s@iskut.ucs.ubc.ca>
- Distribution: inet
- Date: Thu, 5 Nov 1992 08:57:32 GMT
- Lines: 142
-
- In article <1d4d6uINNq7s@iskut.ucs.ubc.ca> unruh@physics.ubc.ca (William Unruh) writes:
- }starr@genie.slhs.udel.edu (Tim Starr) writes:
- }>... I
- }>maintain that maximal individual liberty is the common good. Nor am I as
- }
- }
- }Few others do, from crime to traffic, to Internet traffic regulations.
-
- What?
-
- }>The main factor making our firearms violence rates to high in some places
- }>are people turning to crack dealing out of desperation with ghetto poverty.
- }
- }Your firearm death reate was high long before crack.
-
- True. I spoke about the present. Historically, our crime rate, along with
- the firearm death rate, was fairly low until the 1960s, when the US went through
- a wave of penal reform that changed our prisons into "correctional facilities"
- and a lot of plausible theories were "tested" and not only failed, but put
- our penal system more on the side of criminals as opposed to on the side of
- victims that it had ever been.
-
- }>Stable? Like the Baltic Republics? Where Gorbachev had the police killing
- }>innocents after confiscating their registered guns? Like Yugoslavia? Poland,
- }>where people who challenge heads of state in elections get imprisoned for it?
- }>Sweden? Where a sea change away from welfare-statism is underway in reaction
- }>against having about half the workforce be paid with the taxes paid by the
- }>other half? Like Germany, which recently suffered 4% inflation, and neo-Nazis
- }>riot against the welfare programs for immigrants, and which deports foreigners
- }>to keep its unemployment rate down? Like Canada, where separatism rides high?
- }
- }Sorry should have said like western Europe. And all of your western
- }European examples are simply the normal political process. (even the
- }German is hocking in contrast to the normal state in Western Germany,
- }, and the social upheaval of the integration is far far greater than
- }anything almost any country in the world has gone through, and the
- }violence level is amazingly low considering that. Stable does not mean
- }dead, it means that there are established operating ways of
- }accomplishing political change.
-
- Inflation is probably the most destabilizing thing that can happen to a
- country's economy. If Germany, which has one of the most stable currencies
- in the world, can undergo 4% inflation in a short period of time, then most
- other countries are in bad shape.
-
- }>Switzerland has citizen's vetoes. They have the highest degree of consent
- }>by the governed in the world.
- }
- }Which includes high levels of what many ( including you I suspect) would
- }call Government coercion. However, your position seems to be not that a majority
- }has the right to impose its will on the minority, but that the minority
- }has the right to use arms to protect its position if threatened by the
- }the government ( no matter how large the majority support of the govt
- }position).
-
- Not really. Consent and coercion are opposites; if Switzerland has a high
- degree of consent compared to other countries, then it has a low level of
- coercion by the same standard.
-
- Frankly, I can't make any sense at all of your approximation of my position.
-
- }>You're apparently ignorant of any distinction between command-and-control
- }>regulation from the "public sector" and contractual terms in the "private
- }>sector". You don't have to deal with RSA if you don't consent to it. If
- }>you refuse to deal with the government, it deals with you.
- }
- }Yes I do. If I try to use public key cryptography to protect my privacy,
- }the whole force of the legal system will back RSA's patents. No matter
- }how much I try to avoid them RSA will coerce me to deal with them.
- }Of course you may argue that patent laws should not exist, they are
- }simply another coercive regulation of the Govt. In that case however,
- }the evidence seems to be that the economic arguements are on the side of
- }the Govt regulations.
-
- IF you try to use the product. You aren't forced to. You have no choice
- over whether cryptography will be regulated and how. Regulations are imposed
- by force.
-
- }>It's not only tyrrannical, it's uneconomical as well, a fact which has been
- }>established by economics much more than is necessary to overcome such shallow
- }>denials as yours.
- }
- }Aomw govt regulations are uneconomic, some aid the economy. Trying to
- }figure out which do which is part of the political process. Sometimes
- }stupid mistakes get made. Especially when the arguements get reduced to
- }shroll namecalling and the proponents of either side try to base their
- }positions on "fundamental truths" rather than careful study and
- }analysis. Which is exactly my objection to the current level of debate
- }on the encryption registration. The conflicting needs and desires need
- }to be aired and debated rationally, and not enveloped in a fog of "moral
- }principles", or the regulations that will come are sure to be silly.
-
- No goverment regulations are economic, none aid the economy, and we should have
- separation of economy and state, not micromanage economics via politics.
-
- If you think my positon isn't based upon careful study and analysis, you're
- wrong. Shall I reference my claims?
-
- }>Society isn't a primary which has needs. Society consists of the interactions
- }>of individuals, and as such has no needs which aren't individual needs. Needs
- }>aren't additive.
- }
- } Yes, and those individual needs include stability and security of their
- } physical and economic environment, needs which can be met best, it
- } seems by concerted collective and group action as embodied by governments.
-
- That's precisely what I reject, the claim that those goals are best achieved by
- those means. Where markets are freest, stability and security are greatest.
-
- }>Furthermore, there is not one "benefit" to be had from regulation of crypto-
- }>graphy.
- }
- }The claimed benefit is to be able to prevent and discover criminal
- }activity. Whether this benefit outweighs the benefit derived from the
- }security of being reasonably certain that one can have normal private
- }communications is precisely the argument going on in this group . This
- }argument is not advanced by pretending that one side of the
- }argument does not exist.
-
- I don't pretend it doesn't exist, I claim that the argument is incorrect.
-
- That is especially true if your position is in
- }the minority. ( I suspect that most of the population either could not
- }care about encryption, or believe that it is something only spies or
- }crooks use and should therefor be stringently regulated). In a minority
- }position, telling the majority that their concerns are stupid, ignorant
- }and invalid is one certain way of ensuring that you do not win. Only by
- }recognising that they have valid concerns which you try to meet or at
- }least take seriously can you even hope to win.
-
- I haven't claimed that anyone is stupid. I have claimed that to support
- regulation of cryptography is ignorant and invalid, and have yet to run into
- one concern in this debate that is valid except the prevention and discovery
- of criminal activity, which I haven't challenged. All I've done is criticize
- proposed means to this end, the arguments for which have been terrible.
-
-
- Tim Starr - Renaissance Now! - Think Universally, Act Selfishly
- starr@genie.slhs.udel.edu
-
- "True greatness consists in the use of a powerful understanding to enlighten
- oneself and others." - Voltaire
-