Freemen and Serfs

[Lucky Green]

On Sun, 30 Nov 1997, Tim May wrote:
> 
> Sure, and I've said the same thing many times. The governments of the world
> are cracking down on "illegal thoughts," and illegal vegetables, illegal
> defense items, illegal television programs, and on and on. At the same
> time, bootleg channels are proliferating, copyright is being skirted, money
> laundering is exploding, and on and on.

I am told that the recent criminalization of warez has led to a rush on
crypto by the warez crowd. A certain Internet juke box I am aware of and
which is serving months worth of uninterupted MP3's just might add SSL
with client certs. 
 
> The crackdown has the effect of making the sheeple even more obedient and
> making the adventurers (the wolves?) even bolder. Technology works for
> those who use it.
> 
> Very Nietzscheian.

Futhermore, if using crypto gets you the gas chamber and putting a
bullet through the head of a fed gets you the gas chamber, it stands  to
reason that more otherwise benign crypto users will be willing to put
bullets through the heads of feds. See the war on illegal vegetables.

-- Lucky Green <shamrock at cypherpunks.to> PGP v5 encrypted email preferred.
   "Tonga? Where the hell is Tonga? They have Cypherpunks there?"