Re: Are booby-trapped computers legal?
At 4:19 AM 9/6/95, Jim Choate wrote:
Thus, I suspect it is fully legal to build an electrified fence around one's PC, providing suitable warnings are included.
As far as I know the owner of property has no legal right to kill a person either traspassing or stealing it in any of the 50 states. There was a recent federal ruling that basicly says that if you meet a burglar in your home at nite you can not kill or otherwise harm them unless you're life is directly threatened. In short, you MUST give up the ground if at all possible. Federal and all 50 states (as far as I have been able to determine) rule human life to have a inherantly higher value than property of any type (this does not apply to government institutions).
Well, I wasn't saying one had a legal right to kill a person either trespassing or stealing, I was saying that electrified fences carrying lethal voltages are extant. How they got that way, and what licenses are involved, is unknown to me. But they do exist.
In Texas and all other cattle states that I am aware of, there are specific laws that limit how much voltage and current capacity an electrified fence can have. These laws specificaly prohibit any form of lethal installation. There is no license required nor do you have to mark the fences as electrified.
Cattle fences are not what I was talking about. I have an electrified fence on one side of my property, to keep the deer away. Lethal voltage fences, to keep humans out, are another matter. ....
I don't know what you call it but if nothing else it is ethicaly and moraly reprehinsible.
Different strokes for different folks. Anyone entering my house unannounced faces lethal response. I think of it as evolution in action, and doubt I would lose any sleep over this. It has nothing to do with equating human life over property, it has to do with defending one's property and (maybe) one's life. Here in California, it is becoming more and more common for "home invasions" to be followed by execution of all of the witnesses. (Read "The San Jose Mercury News" for accounts of gang invasions in which all the residents in a home are lined up and shot, excecution-style.) I won't get into a discussion of which states permit lethal force responses, as this is a topic which even I think belongs in talk.politics.guns or similar fora. Suffice it to say that most states allow lethal response under threatening circumstances. --Tim May ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay@got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^756839 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders are just speed bumps on the information superhighway."
If the jury isn't persuaded betond reasonable doubt that you were in genuine apprehension of serious harm to yourself or your family--not your property--then you will be acquitted of using violence to repel an intruder into your home. Maybe not your south 40, but your home. Indeed, if the local prosecutor or US Atty believes, on the positive side, that your actions were reasonable, you probably won't even be charged. Now, that doesn't of itself make deadly force right, but as I'm just through with cleaning two shotguns (dove season here, going again Friday), I'm not going to argue the point too vigorously. I'd say the morality of such situations, leaving aside the legality, is extremely fact-intensive. Situational ethics? Excessive subjectivity? I think not--I think we can apply objective standards to each individual case, but it's fatuous to do so in advance. MacN On Tue, 5 Sep 1995, Timothy C. May wrote:
I don't know what you call it but if nothing else it is ethicaly and moraly reprehinsible.
Different strokes for different folks. Anyone entering my house unannounced faces lethal response. I think of it as evolution in action, and doubt I would lose any sleep over this.
It has nothing to do with equating human life over property, it has to do with defending one's property and (maybe) one's life. Here in California, it is becoming more and more common for "home invasions" to be followed by execution of all of the witnesses. (Read "The San Jose Mercury News" for accounts of gang invasions in which all the residents in a home are lined up and shot, excecution-style.)
I won't get into a discussion of which states permit lethal force responses, as this is a topic which even I think belongs in talk.politics.guns or similar fora.
Suffice it to say that most states allow lethal response under threatening circumstances.
--Tim May
---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay@got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^756839 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders are just speed bumps on the information superhighway."
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