At 11:35 PM 10/7/97 -0400, Charles Platt wrote: On Tue, 7 Oct 1997, Jon Callas wrote:
Like it or not, government has a mandate to protect the people from dangerous technologies, be they in foods, drugs, autos, or information technologies.
Please tell me where it says this in the U.S. Constitution. In particular, please tell me where the FEDERAL government is assigned this power. Thank you. There are a number of places. The usual one they abuse is what's called the "commerce clause" which lets them regulate interstate commerce. They also drag in "providing for domestic tranquility" or anything else that looks good. If you'll look again at my next sentence, I said, "Many people believe that the government uses this mandate as a rationale for acquiring power, many people would prefer that they let us take our chances...." I'm one of those many people. One of the very sad things in our history is that limitations on Federal power became hostage of the race issue a century ago. "States Rights" is a real issue because the Constitution places severe limits on what the federal government is supposed to do. Unfortunately, that term is nigh a synonym for justification of slavery, racial segregation, and other odious things. Limits on the federal government are a casualty of the War Between the States. Recently, the courts have been reversing this trend, tossing out some laws that are justified by the commerce clause. A number of scholars predict this will increase. We can only hope. Jon ----- Jon Callas jon@pgp.com Chief Scientist 555 Twin Dolphin Drive Pretty Good Privacy, Inc. Suite 570 (415) 596-1960 Redwood Shores, CA 94065 Fingerprints: D1EC 3C51 FCB1 67F8 4345 4A04 7DF9 C2E6 F129 27A9 (DSS) 665B 797F 37D1 C240 53AC 6D87 3A60 4628 (RSA)