Wei Dai writes:
I don't understand why there is so much talk about guns here lately. Unless someone comes up with a weapon that has some very unusual economic properties, individuals cannot hope to compete with governments in the domain of deadly force. If we have to resort to physical violence, we've already lost!
Think about it: if we can defend ourselves with guns, why would we need crypto?
I agree- the fedz will always have better firepower than any of us. Tim's strategy of letting them know that he won't take a 'no-knock' raid sitting down might keep them honest. Or it might make them come in with 80 special agents and a heliocopter to drop napalm on his house. I'm not going to spend a lot of time setting up defenses against a massive police attack- the costs are too high (expensive weapons, time practicing on the range) and the hassle is great... who wants to live barricaded in their house, jumping at every noise? Better to do the things that we're good at- writing code, cracking codes, writing about crypto-liberation ideas. However, guns are good for a couple things- they're still useful against non-government thugs, and they're a hell of a lot of fun. -- Eric Murray Chief Security Scientist N*Able Technologies www.nabletech.com (email: ericm at lne.com or nabletech.com) PGP keyid:E03F65E5