At 05:06 PM 10/29/98 -0500, Chip Mefford wrote:

On Thu, 29 Oct 1998, Anonymous wrote:

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At 07:52 AM 10/29/98 -0500, Chip Mefford wrote:

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but some peope are scared of drugs/paedophiles/terrorists etc, so thats the way in for the jackboots. To oppose it we need to reduce fear.

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Right. The new Happy Net campaign.

Well,

Sorry, I don't mean to sound pollyanneish, thats not my point. Its just a point of view I had never heard expressed before, and I thought it was interesting.

Fighting fear with more fear isn't working. Its just that simple, a different approach I think is worthy of investigation.

Your observation is in fact correct. The fear must be shown to be *exaggerated* for the benefit of the fearmongers. The intrusion must be shown to be not just intruding on "them" but on "us". (Europe's recent interest in Echelon may be an example of the latter.) Sheeple will *eventually* learn (again) that nasty people will always do nasty things with the technology du jour, and mostly the police just mop up afterwards. (If it isn't the State doing the nasty things in the first place.) Of course, we might have an intervening dark ages for a millenia or two, but in the long run, you get a clue or go extinct. You don't ban something as basic as metal or encryption because some people do bad things with it. And you don't depend on laws to secure privacy. In the meantime, morons whine for State control of metal, while barbarians are destroying the town's wooden walls with metal rams, and protective metal walls aren't being deployed because the townies fear that the bad townies will abuse metal. "Freedom of choice is what you have, freedom from choice is what you want" -Devo "Those that would trade liberty for security should be shot" -Kite Sparko