[117158] in Cypherpunks
Re: guns, germs, bits
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Jean-Francois Avon)
Fri Aug 27 12:39:54 1999
Message-Id: <199908271620.MAA18271@cti06.citenet.net>
From: "Jean-Francois Avon" <jf_avon@citenet.net>
To: "Cypherpunks" <cypherpunks@toad.com>
Date: Fri, 27 Aug 1999 12:20:52 -0400
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Reply-To: "Jean-Francois Avon" <jf_avon@citenet.net>
On Fri, 27 Aug 1999 07:05:41 +0200 (CEST), Anonymous wrote:
>Man, you are repeating my thoughts. Or my thoughts of a while ago. But now,
>the question is, how can we further our aims? Put any surplus income into
>the guns we can still buy? Turn our friends onto guns? Onto crypto?
>Shit, I don't know enough people to make a difference. But maybe others have
>already automated sympathetic cliques. Mailing lists. Hausfraus w/ crypto.
>Baby.
>Preaching to c'punks is preaching to the choir, believe me.
I've often been accused of preaching while all I was doing was circulating
current info and news. ...sigh...
>Hell, they've
>helped me learn shit I never imagined. But preaching guns and crypto, which
>*I* realized were the same (under Their own definitions) before you hit
>puberty,
>and in fact as sine qua nons of militiary/militia ops, this is so obvious to
>most readers of cp, I'm (you're) just wasting bits, I eventually realized.
>YES crypto is in the same class as weapons, of things DANGEROUS to the
>state if the state is evil.
Therefore, shouldn't the crypto people and gun people unite on the political
and legal front? This would do many things: first, joining forces at the
bottom line level.
Second, widely diffusing the concepts of the tools of privacy through a very
wide and very concerned audience.
>BUT in the tiny minds of the urban sheeple, guns be bad. We'ze be turnin'
>dem in
>fur a hunerd bucks. Rural folk have more clue, but are increasingly an
>endangered species.
I see 'opportunity' written all over this situation! City dwellers are more
aware of privacy problems, rural folks of gun problems. Bring the two
toghther and have them realize that the two problems have the same one and
only cause.
>Guns bad. Crypto like guns. Crypto bad. Terroristo-pedo-narcophiles.
>Not the ones
>running for office; I mean the regular ones, bad, bad, unlicensed markets,
>bad bad.
I've been trying to explain the political aspects of crypto to gun groups
since years, with mitigated success. My error was that they would understand
by themselves all the implications. I've changed my approach since and I get
better results.
There is a bunch of pro-gun guys that are now Privacy-violation aware and
getting keen on crypto for all of the good usual reasons.
My efforts paid-off. And with some support group around, the growth tend to
be exponential if the enthusiams and knowledge is transmitted and kept high.
I wish some of the more legally and politically inclined guys among you would
approach the 2nd amendment defense organisations and start discussing
PRINCIPLES with them. Then, later, you come down to the details.
If you talk like techno-geeks, they are not interested. When you talk
principles, they'll understand you for there is only *one* Reality...
I've converted cops, journalists, ex-MPs, jack-of-all-trades, etc to use PGP
and guess what, they LOVE it! Well, no, actually, they love the FREEDOM and
PRIVACY PRINCIPLES embodied within it.
Will they slowly convert more people to the use of crypto? I suppose that a
certain number of them will.
I haven't kept sufficiently closely in touch with the court cases regarding
crypto, so, unfortunately, I cannot feed them info on that. OTOH, there would
definitely be some interest for the more law-keen guys of the gun community.
I think it is imperative that both communities unite forces and ressources and
bring down the debate from the alledged standpoint of "toy ownership and
liberty to use" to the field of Privacy and "guarantee against govt abuses".
Note how the spooks try in every possible way to subvert the meaning of the
second amendment, which is rather clear and straightforward for the layman,
into something that might possibly not mean what it seems to mean... all in
order to give govt more control on guns (and private property).
Ciao
jfa
