At 8:11 AM -0700 10/30/97, Tim Griffiths wrote:
We hear on TV etc people saying "If this draconian measure saves the life of one innocent child its worth the loss of my right to walk in the park, or whatever". This is clearly shit, but can people suggest a sensible measure of when new legistlation is justified?
Is this a trick question, or sumpin'? If not, then the answer is "the Constitution." (I see that T.G.Griffiths@exeter.ac.uk is not an American. I apologize for my U.S.-centric response. Consult your local Charter or whatever to see if similar rights are spelled out. I suspect most adhocracies do not have rights clearly spelled out, modulo the irony that several people's republics have had nominally more rights-ensuring constitutions than the U.S. has had.) The longer version being that the Constitution and especially the Bill of Rights clearly enumerates rights held by the people, and there is no mention that such basic rights are to be stripped away because the "life of one innocent child" can be saved. Examples of cases where restricting religions, books, guns, 4th and 5th and nth Amendment rights would save the lives of some children are obvious to all. And yet such restrictions remain unconstitutional. Sure, there are _some_ limits. A church, for example, cannot practice ritual bloodletting, on children or on adults. Nor can a church hand out drugs (the Native American Church and peyote case resolved this). And so on. (And many of us disagree with some or all of these limitations.) In the "right to walk in the park" issue cited above, this gets into distracting issues about whether the park is open at all hours, the rules established by whomever built the park, etc. Curfews are a cleaner example. And courts have generally held curfews unconstitutional, when they've been challenged. Travel permits are also unconstitutional in the U.S. People may travel wherever they wish, associate with whomever they wish, etc. (A very few exceptions, such as felons and child molestors.) When in doubt about trading off rights for security, consult the Constitution. (Yes, I'm aware that it's falling into disrepute and tatters. But it beats most alternatives.) --Tim May The Feds have shown their hand: they want a ban on domestic cryptography ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^2,976,221 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."