At 11:08 PM 4/28/96 -0700, you wrote:

...

No. "Those who sacrifice security for freedom, will have neither" is not consistent with Franklin's statement, nor is it true. Security and freedom are antithetical, and worse than that, security is always an illusion. But you can have your illusion, as long as you keep it out of my life. Censor yourself if you wish, but don't censor anything I might want to look up.

The Internet may once have been one of those small close knit communities, small enough not to require law enforcement - although even then it had rules that had to be followed. But that Internet is gone, and it will never return, because now its the biggest city in the world, and the history of the change from pastoral communities to urban life, to the development of nation states and power blocs is also the history of crime. And as the Internet grows, so will its security problems.

My position is to seek a balance between the freedom of the individual and the security of the community. My argument is that when the security of the community is threatened by the freedom of the individual, the community will always prioritise its safety.

"When the security of the community is threatened by the freedom of the individual?!"

From what socio-political ideology do you run your group?

Good government of course means maintaining individual freedoms *and* maintaining community security. I actually disagree that they are antithetical. On the contrary they are a balance that any society has to find. Where individual freedom takes over you have the urban jungle where predators consume prey. Where security takes over you have the totalitarian state. Neither is necessary nor inevitable.

By the way government serves best when it serves least. Remember that.

We are simply concentrating on the problem from two different angles. My concern is to maximise community safety while protecting individual freedom. Your angle is to maximise individual freedom while protecting community safety. There is IMHO very little difference between the two.

No there is a major difference, I feel society is served best when each individual has the freedom to defend and protect themselves apposed to what you want us to do in essence you want us to lay down those liberties to an outsied group who are supposed to protect us. The internet is not a city, it is a computer network that spans the globe. What you are asking for in analogy is not a cop walking a city street but fucking U.N. tanks driving through neiborhoods enforcing rights by way of brute force.

From what I have seen of what your group does you are as hypicritical as law enforcement in your techniques and attacks on others. Often unwarranted and justified in the name of some supposed higher ideal.

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