>At 7:45 AM -0800 2/14/00, Duncan Frissell wrote:
>>At 08:55 PM 2/12/00 -0500, Petro wrote:
>> Or will bother to look in the future.
>>
>>> What is considered legal/moral/rational today *might* change in
>>> the future. Do you really want to take that chance?
>>>
>>> It's a lot easier to remove your eye-glasses to hide your
>>> intellectualism than to hide a decade or twos computerized records of
>>> your checking seditious literature out of the library, or buying it from
>>> Amazon.com.
>>
>>On the other hand, you can just blow people off these days if they don't
>>like your activities. Since one has millions of possible employers and
>>millions of possible residence locations and since attitudes are so
>>diverse, you will be able to find people to live with no matter how bizarre
>>your practices. Even smokers can find work these days. Anarchists have no
>>problems. For some companies, anarchism's a positive.
>
>And since there seem to be some newcomers who are here bashing "megacorps"
>and calling for "privacy laws," let's revisit some well-known points:
Neither DCF, nor myself are exactly newcomers, and (at least
I) wasn't calling for "privacy laws" as such.
I would not be opposed to laws that allowed me to protect my
privacy--such as laws preventing states (i.e. the government) from
mandating that I provide certain information (i.e. SSN) in exchange
for a drivers license, and then selling that information on the open
market, or laws prohibiting the government from buying/forcing their
way into private databases for any reason.
I don't worry about what the *corporations* will do with the
data, I worry about what the *government* will/would do with the data
in certain circumstances. That is an area where law is the second to
last recourse. The last of course being armed revolution. I have to
do just about everything in my power to avoid that last step--while
many of the politicians deserve being shot, they wouldn't be the only
ones massively hurt by such an event, and commerce would probably be
massively disrupted. If I can get closer to the world I would prefer
without lots of killing and bombing, much the better.
>* the desire for a profit almost always wins out over the desire to collect
>customer information: if a business has a choice between collecting some
>customer info or completing a sale, it will take the sale every time.
>(Unless other factors, such as government requirements, intervene...)
Which is where laws, whether they be in the form of
legislation, or the constitution should come into play. The
government *should* be prevented from establishing these requirements.
>* cash settlement is nearly always acceptable, except when Drug and Tax
>Warriors decree otherwise.
Is there any case where cash *isn't* acceptable legally? I am
not aware of any, but since the most expensive thing I've ever
purchased in my life was bought on credit, it's never been an issue.
>* when the bus companies had blacks sitting in the back of the bus in the
>south, it was largely local _law_ that caused them to spend this additional
>money to enforce such rules. (Same as when IBM and Coke and other
>corporations wanted no part of apartheid in South Africa--it was the RSA
>government which demanded they practice apartheid.)
They may have wanted no part in Apartheid, but they were
willing to go along with it. This is part of my point above--that
should the political situation change massively for any reason, the
government could have reason to go looking for people with certain
characteristics in their background. They already have (legal) access
to medical records--want to round up every AIDS patient in the
country? They have access to all of the gun purchase background
checks, what if they started requiring that ammunition and reloading
supply purchases be registered, or at least that the sellers start
keeping track of purchases and forward that to the Feds? Is that
something that should be prevented by law?
How about a law that prevents you from being punished if you
use a non-real ID to avoid getting put *into* these databases to
begin with?
>* "megacorps" are just businesses which have had a lot of customers. Cisco
>is a megacorp because a zillion people like their routers.
This ignores decades of proof that some of the larger (Cisco
is a small company compared to PepsiCo) MegaCorps have involved
themselves in politics world wide--occasionally pumping money and
guns into small countries to insure that local dictators continue to
push policies that provided cheap raw material or labour to the
detriment of the population (I agree that this is to a large degree
that countries problem, but it does demonstrate that at least some
MegaCorps are not just a large version of your local Mom & Pop
distributer).
>The Cypherpunks list has obviously evolved over time. We don't discuss
>"basics" very often (part of the neo-Cypherpunk mantra of "Cypherpunks
>don't debate philosophy, Cypherpunks listen to spokesdroids from crypto
>companies describe their latest products").
Part of the problem is that most of the "old timers" still on
this list are pretty much in agreement about the Freedom v.s. Privacy
issue, whether Strong Crypto in the hands of the Masses is a Good
Thing(tm). Sure, "we" still differ over minor things--Libertarian
v.s. Minarchist v.s. CryptoAnarchist, etc., but over the years the
people with radically different positions, the Dorothy Dennings,
David Sternlight and etc. have either left, or been converted. There
then isn't much to talk about, other than preaching to the faithful,
and pointing out new resources or developments. It is the nature of
the type of people who are on this list, that a lot of that preaching
to the faithful is unnecessary. We *know* what is right and wrong,
and don't need the back patting and mutual masturbation that goes
along with that kind of group discussion.
>However, it would be good if newcomers to the list read some of the basics,
>thought about the implications of liberty and crypto anarchy, and
>reconsidered some of their calls for government action to "protect privacy."
Part of the problem with "Checking the Archives", and
reading, or rereading it is that there is so much chaff to get
through before you get to the wheat.
Maybe that would be an idea for a writer on the list looking
for their next book--take the issues and implications of Strong
Crypto and present all the arguments surrounding them. Hell, call it
The Philosophy of Dot.Com, and you'll get rich...
I don't think either DCF, or myself was calling for the
government to protect our privacy from the MegaCorps. At least I
wasn't.
I was responding to the question "What is the big deal about
having your name in Corporate Databases". The problem isn't that the
Corporation has it, it's that what the Corporation has, the
government can get. I don't want the government to have it. As well,
I don't want to be forced legally to provide that information.
As long as we have laws covering what information I can
provide (i.e. fraud statues, laws against "falsified identification"
and the like), I want to limit the ability of government to access
and manipulate that data.
--
A quote from Petro's Archives: **********************************************
If the courts started interpreting the Second Amendment the way they interpret
the First, we'd have a right to bear nuclear arms by now.--Ann Coulter
