[48127] in Cypherpunks
Re: "Gentlemen do not read each other's mail"
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (jim bell)
Fri Jan 26 05:19:52 1996
Date: Fri, 26 Jan 1996 01:51:34 -0800
To: Rich Graves <llurch@networking.stanford.edu>, cypherpunks@toad.com
From: jim bell <jimbell@pacifier.com>
At 02:14 PM 1/25/96 -0800, Rich Graves wrote:
>
>I believe that the choice not to read other people's personal mail is an
>ethical imperative, since we do not have and probably can not have total
>privacy enforced by technology and law alone. Sure, strong crypto helps,
>and should be spread, but there will always be back doors and
>implementation bugs, and in the worst case, most people will give in to
>moderate torture.
>
>It's hard to say what the ethical role of individuals in the government
>(or Jim Bell's "assassination politics" organization, which quacks like a
>government for me) is.
Needless to say, I disagree. If you define government as, "That entity
which keeps me from doing bad things to people," then a S+W model 629 .44
caliber revolver "quacks like a government to you."
If the reason you don't do bad things in public because people will sneer at
you and criticize, then sneering and criticizing "quacks like a government
to you."
What "Assassination Politics" does is to eliminate the ability of 51% of the
population to control the remaining 49%. If there is any residual
pro-government bias left in this system, tell me and I will work strongly to
root it out.
