[80596] in Cypherpunks
Re: Police & military access
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Kent Crispin)
Fri May 23 03:20:11 1997
Date: Thu, 22 May 1997 23:23:31 -0700
From: Kent Crispin <kent@songbird.com>
To: Cypherpunks Distributed Remailer <cypherpunks@EINSTEIN.ssz.com>
Reply-To: Kent Crispin <kent@songbird.com>
On Thu, May 22, 1997 at 09:04:15PM -0500, Jim Choate wrote:
> Hi,
>
> It occured to me that if the police have no civil liberties extending beyond
> that of a citizen and citizens are not legaly permitted access to military
> hardware then neither should the police.
[...]
> If a police officer can buy body armor and automatic weapons for self
> defence then so can a citizen.
[...]
> Do police have any civil rights not endowed to a individual citizen?
No. But on the job, doing their state assigned duties, they have
access to instrumentalities not available to private citizens or
off-duty police. "On" and "off" duty may sometimes be a little fuzzy
in practice, but the principle is clear. It isn't a big deal, and
it's not a matter of civil rights. A license to practice medicine
gives you the ability to prescribe morphine. A certain class of
drivers license lets you drive a school bus full of children.
--
Kent Crispin "No reason to get excited",
kent@songbird.com the thief he kindly spoke...
PGP fingerprint: B1 8B 72 ED 55 21 5E 44 61 F4 58 0F 72 10 65 55
http://songbird.com/kent/pgp_key.html
