[79326] in Cypherpunks
Re: Rejecting Dialog with Government Vermin
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Jim Bell)
Wed Apr 30 22:51:27 1997
Date: Tue, 29 Apr 1997 21:15:29 -0800
To: Tim May <tcmay@got.net>, cypherpunks@cyberpass.net
From: jimbell@pacifier.com (Jim Bell)
Reply-To: jimbell@pacifier.com (Jim Bell)
At 11:33 4/29/97 -0800, Tim May wrote:
>(I was informed by an esteemed member of our list that I "frightened" a
>D.C. journalist in the lobby at CFP when I answered her question about what
>I thought about the role of crypto in hiding the actions of nuclear
>terrorists. I gave her my stock answer: maybe a nuclear bomb smuggled into
>D.C. could be the best thing to happen to the country...get rid of hundreds
>of thousands of leeches and almost a million welfare addicts.
I'm certainly not going to criticize you for teasing these media-types with
such faux-extremist commentary. However much fun you had, perhaps it would
have been better to move to challenge her implicit assumption that crypto
makes us MORE subject to nuclear terrorism, rather than less.
For example, I consider a major nuclear powers' possession of nukes to be
one of the most serious examples of "nuclear terrorism" there is, but on the
other hand I believe that an appropriate use of crypto (AP) could force any
owners of nuclear weapons to dismantle them. Few people challenge this
claim. If I'm right, crypto is a solution rather than a problem. Why not
remind that journalist that her false impression is the real problem, not
crypto.
Jim Bell
jimbell@pacifier.com
